Stable isotope (? 18O and ? D) and salinity measurements were made on the surface waters collected from the Southern Indian Ocean during the
austral summer (25 January to 1 April 2006) onboard R/V Akademik Boris Petrov to study the relative dominance of various hydrological processes, viz. evaporation, precipitation, melting and freezing over different latitudes.

Iron fertilization of the Southern Ocean is believed to counter the increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and the consequent global warming.
Though a number of large scale iron enrichment experiments have been done in the recent past in different parts of the world ocean, little effort has been made to understand the effect of iron enrichment on nitrogen uptake rates and f-ratios.

The coastal and marine nitrogen cycle occupies a complex, central role within the biogeochemical cycles. Human interventions in the earth system have risen to unprecedented levels, strongly influencing the global nitrogen cycle. The nitrogen cycle in the open ocean compared to coastal ecosystems appears to have remained unharmed, although recent observations have shown increasing anthropogenic influence.