The Ocean remains one of the Earth’s least explored ecosystems. While we have mapped planets and monitored forests from space, much of our deep sea remains largely underexplored. Among these deep-sea ecosystems, such as seamounts- underwater mountains rising from the ocean floor- are among the most biologically important and least understood habitats in the marine environment.
As part of the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), Government of India’s flagship Deep Ocean Mission, my research contributes to national efforts aimed at understanding and conserving India’s deep-sea ecosystems through advanced molecular tools such as eDNA metabarcoding to uncover the hidden biodiversity of these marine ecosystems and understand how life persists in the deep ocean. Traditionally, Marine biodiversity has been studied through trawl surveys, visual observations, and specimen collection. These approaches are expensive, time-consuming and often miss organisms that are rare and difficult to sight. Here, environmental DNA offers a new perspective.
Investigating Biodiversity on Seamounts
A major focus of my current work is on Indian Ocean seamount ecosystems, some of the most unexplored deep-sea habitats within India’s marine territory.
Seamounts are biodiversity hotspots. They influence ocean currents, nutrient cycling, and provide habitats for corals, fishes and other invertebrates. Yet many remain scientifically unexplored.
Through my work, I use eDNA to investigate:
- Species diversity associated with deep-sea seamount ecosystems
- Community composition across different depth gradients.
- Detection of rare and endangered species for marine conservation and management.
This is particularly important because many seamounts are threatened by deep-sea fishing and emerging deep-sea mining activities.
The Future of Ocean Exploration
We are entering a new era of marine science.
Through India’s Deep Ocean Mission, I am proud to contribute to a growing national effort to explore, understand, and protect our deep-sea ecosystems using next-generation molecular tools. Because sometimes, to truly understand the ocean, we do not need to see its inhabitants—we only need to read the DNA they leave behind.