The Goa-headquartered National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) has launched “Coral Reef Monitoring and Surveillance Robot, or C-bot”, for long-term monitoring of coral reefs.
- It is a coral monitoring autonomous underwater vehicle.
- C-bot, which can reach depths of 200 metres, is the first step towards building a capable underwater vehicle that can scan the depth of the Indian Ocean.
- Because of climate change, coral bleaching is taking place. With different sensors, different cameras, it measures what the parameters are, and might help explain why the corals are dying the way they are.
- The vehicle will also help the Navy perform bathymetry studies (study and mapping of the sea floor) to help plot navigation channels and scope out hydrothermal vents, where geothermally heated water seeps up from deep below the ocean floor.
- It will also help in finding the active hydrothermal vents which are emitting a lot of elements into the ocean and active biology which is going on in many places like in many extreme environments where the temperature is 400-500 °C.
- Underwater volcanoes at spreading ridges and convergent plate boundaries produce hot springs known as hydrothermal vents.
