Date:18/05/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/05/18/stories/2006051809350200.htm

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Of ocean and its resources

Staff Reporter

"For our future food needs we can definitely look to the oceans"

WATER WORLD: M. Ravindran of IIT-Madras addressing students on National Technology Day at Birla Planetarium recently. — Photo: K.N. Muralitharan

CHENNAI : "The ocean and its resources are least understood and very little importance had been given to it. But for the last 10 years rapid strides have been made in this field," said M. Ravindran, special adviser, Rural Technology Action Group Cell Centre for Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research, IIT-Madras.

He was addressing students from 20 city schools during the National Technology Day celebrations held at the Tamil Nadu Science and Technology Centre.

Mr. Ravindran spoke about the resources found in oceans and the role played by them in controlling weather and climate. "Water bodies contain 95 per cent of the world living biomass containing 80 per cent of world proteins. For our future food needs we can definitely look to the oceans." India had an Exclusive Economic Zone of 2.1 million cubic km that could be exploited for meeting the country's food, minerals and energy needs. "Oceans provided us with tidal energy, biomass energy, wave energy and thermal energy. But strong structures are needed to harness them as they will have withstand the onslaught of tides, monsoons and cyclones. So building them will prove to be costly," he added.

Mr. Ravindran then went on to explain the projects taken up by the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) such as a low temperature desalination plant (floating platform) being set up at Ennore with a capacity of one million litres a day. The NIOT has also set up another plant at Kavaratti island near the Lakshadweep. The process uses cold deep seawater.

The NIOT has also located an archaeological site under water at the Gulf of Khambay.

Work was on to install an early warning system near the Andamans in early July and a permanent warning system with a data collection centre at Hyderabad in July 2007.

P. Iyamperumal, Executive director, Tamil Nadu Science and Technology Centre, said National Technology Day was celebrated to mark a major milestone achieved in different fields of science, such as Pokhran nuclear test (Nuclear science), aviation technology (testing unmanned flight) and launching the Trishul missile (defence research).