The Hindu Business Line : `Ocean a key element in future of humanity'

OCEAN will continue to be a key determinant for the future of humanity and there is a challenging role in understanding ocean in its totality for the benefit of various sectors of economy and for the welfare of society, a paper presented at a seminar here has said.

Operational oceanography and delivery of information service to society, government and industry especially in the context of sustainable development of the coastal and marine eco system, weather prediction, disaster management and environmental monitoring form a subset of larger socio-economic national objectives of the country.

In the paper submitted at the Kerala Environment Congress 2005, Mr K. Radhakrishnan, Director, Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services, Hyderabad, said that the Department of Ocean Development in India had set out a strategic vision and perspective plan for 2015 with a view to preparing a strategic vision and perspective plan for sustainable development of ocean resources and improving livelihood and timely warning of coastal hazards.

The Vision 2015 lingers around understanding ocean processes through conceiving and implementing long-term observational programmes and incubating cutting edge marine technologies to improve the understanding of the Indian Ocean and its various inter-related processes, he said.

He pointed out that a focussed national effort on ocean atmospheric modelling has been taken in the country with a mission to enhance basic understanding and knowledge base on oceanic and atmospheric process for predictability of ocean, climate and catastrophic weather events, thus enabling improved operational prediction.

India has a coastline of about 7,500 km and the seas around the country directly influence the life of about 370 million coastal populations and the living of 7 million fishing community. It is imperative to rapidly detect and provide timely information on the state of a broad spectrum of marine phenomenon and predictions of the changes, he added.

The concerted efforts of the scientists from the Ocean development, space and fishery science had culminated in a unique service to provide reliable and timely potential fishing zone (PFZ) advisories using satellite data to the fishing community of the entire coastline in a mission mode.

It has been validated that the search time has reduced by 30 to 70 per cent due to the usage of these advisories.

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