A supporting infrastructure has to be built. Effective systems of management and control of the entire set up are also necessary. We need to map living resources, prepare an inventory of commercially exploitable fauna and to map and assess the availability of minerals from the deep sea. The supporting infrastructure and incentives required are research vessesl of different types, manpower, well-laid out programmes of resource exploitation, advanced technology and everything necessary to promote the growth of ocean technology. The main thrust should be on the optimal utilisation of living resources like fish and sea weeds, exploitation of non-living resources such as hydrocarbons and heavy placer deposits, harnessing of renewable resources of ocean energy from waves, temperature differences in the water column, tidal heights, salinity gradients and the collection and processing of polymetallic nodules from the deep sea.
Marine development is linked with scientific and technological achievements in other areas.
Hence, while we develop basic marine science and technology, i.e. technology for marine environment, our technological advances have to be geared to the utilisation and preservation of the marine environment. The extension of national frontiers by an area of 2 million square kilometers of ocean space and the consequent access to new sources of energy, minerals and food, requires great strides in ocean engineering, specially in tasks related to structures, materials, instrumentation, submersibles and systems of propulsion of ships. The exploitation of natural food resources such as fish and sea weeds, and the generation of additional food resources by cultivation, need scientific methods of aquaculture and mariculture. To survey and predict the ocean environment, the main tasks necessary are seafloor mapping, charting, geodesy, ocean dynamics, currents, waves, cyclones, marine fauna, chemistry and physics of the oceans and seabed mineral mapping delineation and assessment. Research in all these areas must examine the various processes and their origins so as to have a fundamental understanding, ensuring predictive capabilities.