India’s first move towards deep sea exploration was successfully conducted by the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), Chennai.

The maiden manned harbour trial of the much-awaited ‘Samudrayan’ project, a three-member deep sea exploration inside a fourth generation deep-ocean human scientific submersible ‘Matsya-6000 was held between January 27 and February 12.

The successful wet test of the ‘Matsya-6000’ at the L&T harbour in Tamil Nadu will now pave the way for conducting shallow-water demonstrations at depths reaching up to 500 metres by the end of 2025.

‘Samudrayan’ project

Samudrayan’ is an ambitious project of the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) and is being implemented as part of the `4,800 crore ‘Deep Ocean Mission’ (DOM). Under the ‘Samudrayan’ project ‘Matsya-6000’ will descend up to a depth of 6,000 metres in the Indian Ocean in stages by 2026. NIOT is an autonomous society under the MoES.