Scientists at Marine Instrumentation Group of CSIR — National Institute of Oceanography have developed a robotic platform, Seabed Resident Event Profiler (SREP), that can be stationed at any water depth down to 200 meters along the Indian coast.
SREP is designed to track oceanic processes such as upwelling that occurs regularly during June to September along the west coast of India and are important for the ecosystem sustenance and fishery.
Several sensors that can detect the conditions associated with upwelling such as low temperature, low oxygen, high nutrients, and changes in density patterns are placed on this platform.
This robot records the water column information regularly as programmed at every 10 to 25 cm during every profile four times a day, stores the data and communicates the same to users at the institute.
The robot in its final configuration will be able to sit on the seabed for 100 days continuously.
