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हिन्दी — Read in HindiOcean, polar and earth science missions
Deep sea exploration, seabed minerals and who may mine them, ocean observation, India's Arctic and Antarctic research, and seismology. Prelims has asked about India's Deep Ocean Mission and who licenses exploration of the international seabed.
Foundation notes: UNCLOS: the zones from the coast to the Area · Deep sea minerals
Showing 1 of 5 articles, those that changed from 1 to 30 September 2026.Show all
India's deep sea mining programme
Copy link to India's deep sea mining programmePrelims and Mains
India's deep sea mining programme explores the seabed for minerals under three International Seabed Authority contracts.
Exploration contract
Exclusive ISA rights to survey an area
Technology trials
Crawlers tested beyond 5,000 m under the Deep Ocean Mission
Industry and policy
Private participation and a White Paper on Deep Sea Mining
Exploitation Code
Commercial mining in international waters only after the ISA brings it out
The contracts and the trials
- One, held since 2002, is for polymetallic nodules over an exclusive area of 75,000 sq km in the Central Indian Ocean Basin.
- Two are for polymetallic sulphides, on the Central and Southwest Indian Ridge and on the Carlsberg Ridge in the Arabian Sea, which made India the first country to hold two.
- Exploration is survey and test mining, and NIOT's indigenous mining crawler has been trialled at 5,270 m.
- Commercial mining waits on the Authority's Exploitation Code, which it has not adopted.
The case against
- The damage does not stay where the machine is.
- Removing nodules destroys slow growing habitats that may take very long to recover.
- Sediment plumes and noise spread well beyond the mined site, which is why the mission's own species lists matter.
What changed
8 Sep 2026
- At an industry outreach workshop the Ministry of Earth Sciences and the National Institute of Ocean Technology invited private firms into deep sea mining and announced a White Paper on Deep Sea Mining to set the terms.
Background reading: PIB, 12 Aug 2026: Deep Ocean Mission: submersible, nodules and hydrothermal vents (opens in a new tab)
Also filed elsewhere
- National report on deep-sea fishery resources · on Marine and coastal ecosystems
The national report on deep sea fishery resources is the Ministry of Earth Sciences' account of the fish in India's deep water, below the reach of light.
- The UN declaration on sea level rise and statehood · on Cryosphere, oceans and sea level
The United Nations General Assembly's declaration on sea level rise affirms that a State remains a State even if the sea takes its land, and that its maritime boundaries stay where they were fixed.