The country will be hosting the 2nd International Indian Ocean Expedition (IIOE) in December, almost 50 years after it had hosted its first edition, during which the participating nations will also study the changes that have taken place in the Indian Ocean since the 1960s.
"The second IIOE will have at least 20 counties participating in it. It will start in early December this year and will continue for next five years," Director of National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), Dr S W A Naqvi told reporters today in the presence of Union Science and Technology Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan.
The IIOE-2 is a developing initiative under UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), which aims at providing an exciting platform for knowledge transfer and capacity building, besides raising global awareness about the importance of the Indian Ocean.
The first such expedition had been held during 1960-65 with the participation of 20 countries and 40 ships.
Besides the US, Japan, Germany, France, Australia and South Africa, regional countries including India will be participating in the event with their own resources.
"Being a dominating power in ocean research, people of the world are looking at India. We will be organising major meetings in November-December after which we will be able to launch the expedition in early December," the director said.
Recalling the previous event, he said the first expedition had turned out to be the largest international collaboration ever.
"At that point of time oceanography in India was at a very nascent stage. There have been fifty years since the last expedition (was held) and a lot of things have happened in the Indian Ocean," Naqvi said.
Listing the changes, he said oceans are becoming "warmer" and at the same time "more acidic".
"There has been a climatic change, also there are systemic changes that are happening in the oceans. The oceans are becoming warmer, they are losing oxygen, they are becoming more acidic. We are going to look into effects that happened in last fifty years," Naqvi said.
In 1960s, we knew nothing about the ocean so the efforts went into getting the larger picture, he added.
