Journal of Marine Science: Research & Development
Open Access

Abstract

Understanding the oceans is required not only for pure scientific curiosity but also for global climate change issues, minerals/ energy resource exploitation, coastal zone management, marine pollution hazards and submarine communication and acoustic propagation for strategic planning, fisheries, transportation and recreation. A systematic scientific understanding of the processes and products of the deep oceans is a top priority research topic of today due to the vast cover of oceans (>60%) of the Earth?s Surface and source for huge mineral resources. Deep oceanic studies also provide clues for unraveling past and present-day climate changes, which challenge modern society. The understanding of deep-marine sedimentary processes during the past few decades is essentially due to the growing demand for natural resources and availability of highly sophisticated exploration techniques and comprehensive data sets, thanks to the immense industrial interest (particularly petroleum industry) in deep-sea sediments. Multidisciplinary research in the last decade further provided further impedes and has thrown more light on the complex biogeochemical processes driving and controlling productivity and, thus, an important part of the deep- sea sedimentation. The increasing petroleum exploration activities in deep-water realm to meet the growing demand for oil and gas has led to several new discoveries of hydrocarbons in deep-water. It was estimated that During the three decades from 1970 to 1998, about 33 billion barrels of oil equivalent (BBOE) were added to the oil reserves from 29 giant deep-water discoveries (Pettingill, 1998) and During January 2000-May 2004 alone, 4.5 BBOE (a 40% increase) were added to the deep-water reserves of the Gulf of Mexico (Richardson et al., 2004). Recent new Hydrocarbon vision 2025(HV2025) and entry of new and private oil exploration companies in to India has provided encouraging finds and an enhanced scope for future increased oil exploration activities in Deep Waters. Despite the vast amount of data base that is available and encouraging new hydrocarbon resources, yet much is uncertain about deep-water reservoirs in terms of their depositional origin and reservoir potential. Therefore, in the light of above, present paper discusses on the broad understanding of the general geology & sedimentology of deep oceans with particular reference to the sedimentary processes, depositional mechanisms, mineral resources (with particular reference to the Hydrocarbons) and the recent advances in technology and geospatial applications towards the understanding and reconstruction of palaeo-ocenographic settings of the geological the past.

Biography

Kotha Mahender was awarded Ph.D. Degree in Sedimentology at the age of 27 years from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and a subsequently, in 1999, has completed the certificate course in Geoinformatics from Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (ISRO), Dehradun, India. He is the Professor and currently Head, Department of Earth Science at Goa University (a NAAC accredited university), India,. His research interests include Sedimentology, Petroleum Geology and GIS and he has successfully completed over 10 Government of India (DST Funded) sponsored research projects. He has been a resource person to deliver invited talks at several institutes/universities. He has published more than 20 papers in reputed journals and is an active member of several scientific associations (life member IAS, ISRS and GSI and Founder and current member of International geospatial Society (GSDI). He has been serving as reviewer of many reputed scientific journals.