In a first, two Indian aquanauts dive 5,000m into Atlantic Ocean

In a first, two Indian aquanauts have plunged more than 4,000 m and 5,000 m below sea level in the North Atlantic Ocean. This was stated by the Ministry of Earth Sciences on Thursday.

The achievement comes weeks after Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla became the first Indian to visit the International Space Station.

Conducted in partnership with France on August 5 and 6, in the French submersible ‘Nautile’, this marks a step towards India’s Deep Ocean Mission “Samudrayaan”.

A five-member team of National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), comprising Commander Jatinder Paul Singh (retd), Paliniappan, Dr Sathianarayanan, G Harikrishnan and R Ramesh, got hands-on experiences on pre-dive preparatory tasks, dive planning, manoeuvring and trajectory tracking from ship.

On August 5, Ramesh, a scientist at the NIOT, dived 4,025-m-deep, and on the following day, Singh became the first Indian to set a record of 5,003-m.

Singh, who hails from Jammu, said it took him 2.5 hours to reach the depth of 5,003 m.

“After reaching the depth, I worked on the sampling collection. I wanted to see how the manipulators, which are called robotic arms, work at that depth. I also got to see the visuals deep inside the ocean, where even sunlight cannot penetrate. I had spent some four hours of operation at the ocean bed. It took 2.5 hours to return to the surface. So, I had spent almost 10 hours in the operation,” he said.

Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh said India had joined an elite group of fewer than half a dozen nations to have ventured so deep into the ocean. “The expedition was conducted as a collaborative scientific activity with IFREMER, the French marine research institute. This record-setting dive is a prelude to the activities under India’s Samudrayan Mission, which aims to send three aquanauts to a depth of 6,000 m in the indigenously developed submersible MATSYA-6000 by 2027,” he said.

Samudrayan is part of the Government of India’s flagship Deep Ocean Mission, launched to explore and sustainably harness deep ocean resources.

The Earth Sciences Minister highlighted that India, with a coastline of 11,098 km and a vast Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), held an immense potential for both living and non-living marine resources — offering a natural advantage unmatched by any other country. He called for concerted efforts to explore and tap these unexplored resources to add value to the economy, particularly through the development of the blue economy. He further said India had already signed a contract with the International Seabed Authority for exploring deep-sea minerals at depths ranging from 4,000 m to 5,500 m.