India has joined hands with Australia to learn ‘what makes the Indian Ocean tick’ and how both countries can benefit from it. Researchers from the two countries will launch robotic floats, armed with sensors, in the Indian Ocean in mid 2014 to get data which would help them predict the ocean’s impact on regional climate and weather patterns and effectively manage resources.
The Bio Argo floats are expected to enhance the successful Argo float technology to measure large-scale changes in the chemistry and biology of marine ecosystems below the ocean’s surface. This is expected to give researchers a greater understanding of the physical and biological drivers behind the Indian Ocean.
The Argo floats are a network of 3,600 free-floating sensors, operating in open ocean areas to provide real-time data on ocean temperature and salinity.
The floats will have additional sensors for dissolved oxygen, nitrate, chlorophyll, dissolved organic matter and particle scattering. They would target specific gaps in researchers’ understanding of Indian Ocean ecosystems of immediate concern to India and Australia, such as the Bay of Bengal and the waters of north Western Australia, a release from the Australian High Commission said.
The National Institute of Oceanography (CSIR-NIO) and the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services are spearheading the pilot project, in collaboration with Australia’s national science agency — Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). The researchers expect the project will improve their understanding of cause and effect in the Indian Ocean’s climate and ecosystems.
Answering frequently asked questions in the release, the researchers said that from the data they could draw information on the growth of plankton cells that drive the biology of the Indian Ocean, how much carbon they take up, how much gets used up the food chain and how much gets buried. Knowing about this growth is important for predicting how much food the Indian Ocean can produce and how much carbon dioxide it can capture.
Collecting the data will give the researchers a better idea of what keeps the Indian Ocean healthy and productive, allowing the countries to manage its resources more effectively. It will also help them understand how the ocean influences both the regional and global climate and extreme weather events.
“By studying the Indian Ocean in this detail, we can investigate the origin and impact of marine heatwaves like the one that devastated the coral reefs and fisheries off north Western Australian in 2011 – and improve our prediction of them in the future,” Nick Hardman-Mountford of CSIRO said.
CSIR-NIO director Wajih Naqvi said the novel technological innovation would give researchers from both countries a new understanding of the Indian Ocean. “We expect the technology being utilized in this project to provide new insights into the biogeochemistry of the Indian Ocean and how it is being impacted by human activities,” Naqvi said.
Nick D’Adamo, head of the Perth Programme Office supporting Unesco’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), said, “By combining the research capabilities of India and Australia, we will see an improved ability to predict and prepare for global climate change, as well as better conservation of marine biodiversity.”
The $1-million project, scheduled to last for three years, has been funded in part by the Australian government under the Australia-India Strategic Research Fund.
By the end of the project, the researchers are expected to have built up key datasets for some ecological hotspots in the Indian Ocean – such as the Bay of Bengal and oceanographic eddies off the Western Australia coast.
In the longer term, it is hoped that this project will form a key component of a larger Indian Ocean observing network that over the next several years will give the researchers a much better idea of how the Indian Ocean works.
2014 Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd.