Luhut Advises Prabowo To Buy Research Vessels With The Most Congressional Technology

The Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment (Marves) Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan gave input to the elected president Prabowo Subianto to buy research ships with sophisticated tools, especially to map the richness of the deep sea to potential disasters.

"I will encourage Pak Prabowo so that this is also a priority," said Luhut on the sidelines of a press conference related to an expedition with Indonesia-OceanX, in Nusa Dua, Badung Regency, Bali, Wednesday, May 15.

According to him, the Indonesian government has a budget to buy exploration ships for research with these sophisticated tools.

One of the sophisticated ships for the study is OceanXplorer, which belongs to the OceanX marine exploration nonprofit institution at an estimated price of IDR 3.5 trillion.

He revealed that having a research ship does not have to be luxurious, but mainly equipped with sophisticated equipment.

"Indonesia must be more aggressive, you can't have to wait, a country as big as us doesn't have a ship for research," he said, quoted by ANTARA.

To get around that, cooperation with other agencies both at home and abroad needs to be done to map natural wealth to the deep sea as well as mapping potential disasters centered on the seabed.

The ship, which is owned by a non-profit institution, has advanced equipment, including a remote operated vehicle (ROV) or a device capable of diving at depths of up to 6,000 meters, along with two researchers/operators in it, to laboratories.

"We don't have to make the ship luxurious, but it has the most up-to-date technology and there young Indonesians can learn, it's like a floating university," he said.

Luhut explained that more than 70 percent of Indonesia's territory is the sea with coastlines reaching more than 108 thousand kilometers and 17,504 islands.

The Indonesian marine wealth also stores biodiversity, fisheries, blue carbon, new renewable energy to the Indonesian sea area, which is one of the world trade routes.

Even so, he said, only about 19 percent of Indonesia's waters have been mapped and less explored, especially the deep sea.

In Indonesia, there are deep water points, including the Javanese Trench with an estimated depth of 7,180 meters, the Banda Sea reaches 7,440 meters to the Sulawesi Sea reaching 6,200 meters.