Bhubaneswar, May 13: Students of IIT-Bhubaneswar's School of Earth, Ocean and Climate Sciences recently got an opportunity to collect data for oceanographic research at the International Indian Ocean Expedition undertaken in the Bay of Bengal.

The expedition, supported by the Union government's ministry of earth sciences under the National Monsoon Mission programme, had participants from several national and international agencies.

"This was the second multi-institutional research programme and part of the continued Ocean Mixing and Monsoon programme. The students were involved in collecting basin-scale upper ocean measurements," IIT-Bhubaneswar deputy director S. Tripathy said.

The expedition aimed to understand the upper ocean physics and air-sea interaction in the Bay of Bengal.

"It was a huge learning experience for us. We learnt how to obtain basin-scale upper ocean measurements from ships using instruments. We also gained experience of the use of automated weather station to characterise the surface fluxes in order to measure ocean temperature, salinity, current, turbidity, oxygen and turbulence in north Bay of Bengal," said Subrat Kumar Mallick, one of the participants from IIT-Bhubaneswar.

The participants also included scientists from Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services, National Institute of Ocean Technology-Chennai, Indian Institute of Science-Bangalore, Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi, Space Applications Centre-Ahmedabad, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research-Hyderabad and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution-USA.

The participation of its students was particularly important for IIT-Bhubaneswar as it has already initiated the process of establishing a Bay of Bengal Coastal Observatory. The observatory, funded by the ministry of earth sciences, will come up on 40 acres near Gopalpur in Ganjam district.

At the same time, another team of students and faculty members from the institute is getting ready to take part in an ocean expedition in northern Bay of Bengal shortly.

"Faculty member Sandeep Pattnaik will take part in aircraft-based observations between June 20 and 27 under the research initiative, jointly sponsored by India and the United Kingdom," Tripathy said.