The Ocean India Has Been Ignoring
The Indian Ocean covers roughly 70.56 million square kilometres and drops to nearly 8,047 metres at its deepest point, the Sunda Deep. Until the last decade, Indian deep-sea science was largely confined to the continental shelf, the shallower coastal fringe where fishing and resource surveys made economic sense. The hadal and abyssal zones, anything below 3,000 metres, were left to international cruises that occasionally dipped into Indian waters and took their specimens home.
