Bad News From India

India has developed devices to search the depths of the ocean - to as deep as over 5,000 meters (5 km)

Yeah!...

for economic exploration, joining a league of nations that are developing such capability to exploit ocean wealth.

Booo!

'Once fully tested, we will be able to demonstrate and study what is available at depths of 5,000 metres and more. This will help us know how the mineral wealth can be exploited,' said Dr M.A. Atmanand, project director at NIOT.

Exactly what we need another Nautilus!

In an attempt to replace this with something better out of India I differ to Mujhse Dosti Karoge!

More like this

NEPTUNE is more than just a planet...a clever acronym for the North-East Pacific Time-Series Undersea Networked Experiments. The U.S. Canadian venture is series of cable-linked seafloor observatories, purported to be the world's largest. The project will lay 3,000 km of powered fibre optic cable…
On April 24, 2014, an exclusive group of visionaries presented to over 4,000 students at the USA Science & Engineering Festival's inaugural X-STEM Symposium sponsored by Northrop Grumman Foundation and MedImmune. The all day event included interactive presentations and workshops with some of…
tags: evolutionary biology, behavioral ecology, migration, microtechnology, geolocator, natural history, biological hotspots, longest migration, seabirds, Arctic Tern, Sterna paradisaea, researchblogging.org,peer-reviewed research, peer-reviewed paper Arctic Tern, Sterna paradisaea, Iceland.…
by Elizabeth Grossman The US may be fourth on the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) list of countries ranked by per-capita income, but persistently high unemployment has left many of this country's residents in poverty. The past year has seen a record increase in US children enrolled in…

So what exactly is your objection? Is there reason to think that this project will be exceptionally destructive?

It's strange anyone might imagine that Bollywood could exist without a mineral extraction industry. Even if all the Indian subsistence farmers make better lives by becoming pop stars, the material resources will have to come from somewhere. Do you think that mining on land is inherently better?

Also, the link between economic exploration and real scientific discovery has always been strong (even if there is also a tension). I don't just mean the availability of funding. To learn about the earth it has been necessary to cut into it in a large scale way.

The tone of your posting is less that mining should be rationally managed and regulated than that people have no right to live on the planet.

I'd be interested in more posts along these lines. Perhaps you have in mind a model for the deep sea like Antarctica? What impact has oil and gas drilling had on ecosystems? Is sustainable fishing possible?

In any case, it's already an interesting blog on something I don't know much about. Thanks!

Obviously humans, in today's society, cannot live without mineral resources. Yet our knowledge of terrestrial systems before large-scale mining took place was much more advanced than our understanding of the deep. Our scientific understanding doesn't match the rapidness by which threats to the deep sea are growing. It is my concern that India is spending considerable money on such efforts without a complimentary amount going to basic research. I agree that some of our knowledge and growth of deep-sea sciences is a result of funding, efforts, and exploration by industry. My hope is for good management practices but there seems to be little interest and funding for this.