Union Minister for Mines Dinsha Patel on Saturday dedicated a Rs 650-crore deep sea exploration ship to the nation. The ship — Samudra Ratnakar — is currently docked at Kandla Port.
The ship was acquired by the Geological Survey of India (GSI) last week for undertaking deep sea surveys and exploration of minerals like copper and gold etc. lying in deep sea.
The ship, manufactured by the Hyundai Heavy Industries, South Korea, has the potential to explore up to a depth of 600 metres.
Furnished with the latest technological equipments, it can sail for 45 days at a stretch and accommodate 73 persons. It will be docked at Chennai.
GSI has entered into an agreement with the Shipping Corporation of India for management, operation and maintenance of the ship — Samudra Ratnakar.
The new ship, according to GSI officials, is the first-of-its-kind in South-East Asia.
So far, GSI was carrying out exploration and survey activities in deep sea with the help of cargo ships that were converted for exploration activities.
So far, GSI has reported to have surveyed over 95 per cent of 2012 million sq km of Exclusive Economic Zone(EEZ), including around 1,05,000 sq kms of territorial waters of India.
These surveys were conducted in coastal waters of Arabian sea, the northern part of Indian ocean, Andaman-Nicobar and Bay of Bengal through its three ships — RV Samudra Kaustubh, RV Samudra Shaudhikama and RV Samudra Manthan.
The RV Samudra Ratnakar is the first all weather ship (under Indian Flag) to be built under SPS -2008 code and is classified as a Dual Class (DNV and IRS) Ship. Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) is responsible for manning the ship along with all the existing research vessels of GSI. Norinko, an Indian firm which has expertise in this field has tied up with SCI for manning and maintenance.
RV Samudra Ratnakar is an all-weather ship fitted with Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS), Heading and Motion sensors and Dynamic Positioning System to keep it stationary during coring operations. The vessel is 103.4m long, 19.2m wide with a draft of 6m.
The vessel is fitted with various multi-disciplinary scientific equipments like Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP), Deep and Shallow Multibeam Sonars, Single Beam Echo sounder, Sub-bottom Profiler, Acoustic Positioning System, Single Streamer Multi-channel Seismic system (960 channels, 6km streamer), Marine Magnetometer and gradiometer, Marine Gravimeter, Side Scan Sonar, Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV), Heat-flow Measuring system, Current Meter, Conductivity-Temperature-Depth (CTD) system, Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS) system and Underwater Camera. Sampling devices include Piston Coring system (30m), Vibro Corer (8-10m), Grabs, Spade Corer, Dredger, Core Splitter, Core Cutter, X-Ray Core Scanner and Water Sampler to collect sea water at various depths. A robust Marine Data Management system is in place to integrate and collate all the data received from various equipments.
GSI plans to collaborate with other National Organizations like National Centre for Antarctic and Offshore Research (NCAOR), National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), National Institute of Oceanography, Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC) etc., which are working in marine domain and launch exploration for deep sea mineral deposits like Poly-metallic nodules, hydrothermal sulphide deposits containing base metals along with gold, cobalt, nickel and silver and cobalt-nickel encrustations. It will help in creation of much valuable database and locating potential zones of mineral deposits for strategic utilization.
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