NIOT Develops Remotely Operated Vehicles for Coral Reef in Andaman & Nicobar Islands

The endangered coral reef has been facing various problems due to ocean pollutions and also global warming and rise of sea level leading to various threats to the coral reef. Andaman and Nicobar Island considered to a hot tourist spot mainly as it’s enriched with coral reef is one such geographical location that’s facing threat to its natural resource of coral reef. Coral reef biodiversity at Andaman region, roughly around 11,000 sq.km. was seriously affected during the 2004 Tsunami event and also are undergoing the stress from the increasing sea surface temperature.

National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), has developed The Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) that provides a mechanism for surveillance and mapping of the coral reef in Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Currently this was only possible with Scuba diving to examine the coral reef and various damage controls with rejuvenation of damaged coral reefs.

National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), for the first time, used the indigenously-developed Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV), to map the coral reefs in Andaman & Nicobar Islands (North Bay and Chidiyatapu) and that the ROV can be used for this purpose efficiently. The process of coral reef mapping can now be done at a very brisk rate with the use of ROV indigenously developed by NIOT. With the use of the Remotely Operative Vehicle, 4 to 6 KM of mapping can be done in and day as compared to one week if done with scuba diving mechanism.

Some factual statistic recorded by ROV's are that the water temperature ranged between 31oC at surface and 30.5oC at 1 m water depth. It further decreases in deeper waters as recorded by the ROV based sensor.

A radiometer is attached on the ROV that provides spectral signatures of different types of corals in Andaman. The spectral signatures of the corals are valuable in developing algorithms to map the coral reefs using sensing techniques, especially the satellite remote sensing.
Good news is that there are no evidences of coral bleaching at Andaman reef during the mapping period in April 2016 but will require constant monitoring to know what would happen when the temperature rises further.