INS Darshak on survey mission in Mauritius

The deployment of INS Darshak is very important for undertaking the bathymetric surveys required for the publishing of a new navigational chart to comply with the enhanced charting scheme executed by the National Hydrographic Office, India. Detailed bathymetric survey would be carried out for the first time at Souillac and thereafter a new large scale chart covering the area would be published. Apart from the sea faring community, the chart will be of immense value to various stakeholders, especially those planning development activities in the maritime domain in the southern part of Mauritius, where until now, very limited data is available.

Apart from surveys for nautical charting, the ship will carry out a deep sea survey in the South East of Mauritius using Multi Beam Echo Sounder as requested by various stakeholders in Mauritius. Officers from various organisations related with ocean matters are participating in the survey and will benefit from the training during ship’s two sea sorties.

INS DArshak’s visit is the 12th deployment of Indian Naval Surveying Ship in Mauritian waters since the first visit in 2006. INS Darshak, which has visited Mauritius twice before in the years 2102 and 2016, is fitted with a wide variety of state of the art Hydrographic and Oceanographic equipment suite like deep and shallow water Multibeam Echo Sounder, Side Scan Sonars, Single Beam  Echo Sounders, Differential GPS, Doppler Current Profilers, Current Meters, Sound Velocity Profilers, Bottom samplers and other optical survey instruments. The ship carries an integral helicopter and four fully equipped Survey Crafts, which would be extensively deployed for data collection in this period.