INS Nilgiri joins Eastern Naval Command in Vizag
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INS Nilgiri is a major advancement over the Shivalik-class frigates. These multi-mission frigates are capable of operating in a 'blue water' environment dealing with both conventional and non-conventional threats in the area of India's maritime interests.
Built in Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited Mumbai, the INS-Nilgiri has made Visakhapatnam her home port. This state-of-the-art warship was welcomed to Visakhapatnam in the traditional manner.
This state-of-the-art warship is driven by her motto — "Adrish Yabalam, Ajeya Shauryam." INS Nilgiri is dedicated to the naval empire of the Cholas.
These ships are fitted with supersonic surface-to-surface missile system, medium range surface-to-air missiles system, 76 mm upgraded gun, and a combination of rapid-fire close-in weapon systems.
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In Maharashtra port, ship waits to be sunk, start new life as artificial reef
AT THE Vijaydurg port, a natural harbour in Maharashtra's coastal Sindhudurg district, an 81-metre-long piece of naval history lies still against the blue of the Arabian Sea, awaiting its second innings. INS Guldar, a decommissioned Navy warship, will soon be deliberately sunk — or 'scuttled' — to breathe new life into its metal bones, transforming it into an artificial reef and an underwater tourist attraction. Though scuttled ships have been used to create artificial reefs elsewhere in the world, this is the first such attempt in India. 'The idea behind this project is to develop tourism in Sindhudurg. When the ship is submerged, it will gradually form an underwater reef that attracts various kinds of fish. Once that happens, people from all over the world, especially avid scuba divers, will come to the district,' says an official of the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporat-ion (MTDC) who is associated with the project. Home to MTDC's Indian Institute of Scuba Diving and Aquatic Sports (IISDA), Sindhudurg, 120 km from Goa, has been a training centre for scuba diving enthusiasts for over a decade. Had all gone according to plan, INS Guldar would have been scuttled in April. Officials said its scuttling was postponed in view of tensions between India and Pakistan after the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam. An official at the Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited, the government-run firm responsible for the scuttling, said the process was delayed further due to the early arrival of monsoon in Maharashtra. 'Too much wind or rough seas can topple the ship, which means it won't go down as planned. We are waiting for a lull in the monsoon (to carry out the scuttling),' the official adds. The ageing INS Guldar, a Kumbhir-class landing ship designed for amphibious warfare and capable of beach landings, was once part of India's peacekeeping mission in Sri Lanka, combating attacks from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Tamil separatist group, across the beaches of Jaffna and Trincomalee in the island nation. The plan to acquire a ship for scuttling took off in December 2023, when the MTDC hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, then Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and then Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis in Sindhudurg on the occasion of Navy Day. Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Dinesh Kumar Tripathi, who was then the Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Naval Command, was also in attendance. The MTDC is learnt to have asked Admiral Tripathi for a decommissioned ship as a 'token of gift' to the state tourism department so that it could be turned into an 'underwater museum and artificial reef' at Sindhudurg. The Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation hopes to transform INS Guldar into an underwater tourist attraction. Scuttling is usually a wartime tactic involving the deliberate sinking of a vessel — in case of an emergency or to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. On November 26, 2024, the Union Finance Ministry green-lit the project, followed by a nod from the Maharashtra government on December 19, 2024. On February 21, 2025, the Navy handed over INS Guldar to the MTDC on an 'as is where is' basis at Karwar in Karnataka. Built at Poland's Gdynia Shipyard, INS Guldar was commissioned into the Indian Navy nearly four decades ago, in 1985. It was first based in Visakhapatnam, where it was used for amphibious warfare, transferring troops and equipment and for disaster relief operations. In 1995, it joined the Andaman and Nicobar command, where it served until its decommissioning on January 12, 2024, according to a statement by the Navy. The underwater museum-cum-artificial reef project is estimated to cost Rs 78 crore. The Centre will bear nearly 60% of the total cost and the state government the rest, said an MTDC official. According to the Detailed Project Report (DPR) accessed by The Indian Express, the Sindhudurg site will have a carrying capacity of 2,773 divers daily, spread over six diving sessions in an eight-hour operational period. The MTDC expects at least 71,000 tourists to visit the site in the first year, with the figure projected to go up to 1.10 lakh within a decade. Talking about the underwater museum-cum-artificial reef project, an official said every ship has a scuttling plan that the captain follows to deliberately sink the ship – usually 'in case of an emergency or to prevent it from falling into enemy hands'. The process of scuttling, he said, follows the Archimedes principle, which states that the buoyant force keeping an object afloat is equal to the weight of the water the object displaces. Simply put, for a ship to sink, it must be filled with water to achieve negative buoyancy. 'To achieve that, the ship's sea chest (a compartment built into the hull below the waterline) will be opened to flood the engine room. The front section will also be flooded simultaneously in a controlled manner,' the official says, adding that the process will take up to 10 hours. According to the DPR, the ship, which has been stripped of all pollutants that may harm marine life, will be sunk to a depth of nearly 30 metres. Once submerged, INS Guldar, which has a flat bottom, will simply sit on the seabed, around 3 km from existing scuba diving sites near Malvan and Tarkali beaches or around 15 km off the coast of Sindhudurg, near the Vengurla Rocks in the Arabian Sea. The DPR states that non-certified divers who have completed pool training will be allowed to dive down to a depth of 12 metres; certified divers up to 18 metres, which will give them access to the middle parts of the ship; and advanced divers to the deepest part of the ship, including the hull and the seabed. For non-divers, the MTDC plans to acquire a 24-seater submarine, offering tourists a 20-minute panoramic underwater view of the shipwreck. To enhance employment prospects in Sindhudurg, the MTDC plans to train locals in scuba diving, boat handling and as tourist guides. If successful, this could become India's first operational submarine tourism experience. Gujarat had announced a similar project at the Bet Dwarka island in 2023. While the scuba diving plan is expected to take off as soon as the ship is scuttled, experts say it could take a year or more for a reef to 'fully establish and function as essential habitat'. Alex Fogg, Natural Resources Chief of Florida's Okaloosa County in the United States, says that while fish appear 'almost immediately', the formation of an artificial reef is dependent on a number of factors – from the size of the vessel to the depth at which it is sunk, and its proximity to another reef. 'Larger, more complex vessels in shallower waters tend to establish more quickly,' Fogg explains. 'That's not to say smaller or deeper reefs aren't beneficial, they are just a different community.' Okaloosa County deployed its first artificial reef off Destin-Fort Walton Beach in 1976. Today, it hosts over 500 artificial reefs created from concrete structures, old bridge materials, military equipment, and decommissioned vessels. Marine biologist Vardhan Patankar too says that while the sunken ship could still make for a good scuba diving site since 'it will attract fish and a variety of associated invertebrates', whether it will be a viable reef with diverse composition is debatable. He says, 'An artificial reef is created when free-flowing larvae from a parent reef find another hard substratum (a layer of something, like rock or soil, below another layer). When that happens, they settle and thrive.' Patankar explains, 'Larvae can stay alive for a day and usually settle where their parents are. So, they are not going to come all the way from Angria Bank (a natural reef over 100 km away from Sindhudurg) to this site. They will most likely come from Sindhudurg, where the species composition is low.' Sonal Gupta is a senior sub-editor on the news desk. She writes feature stories and explainers on a wide range of topics from art and culture to international affairs. She also curates the Morning Expresso, a daily briefing of top stories of the day, which won gold in the 'best newsletter' category at the WAN-IFRA South Asian Digital Media Awards 2023. She also edits our newly-launched pop culture section, Fresh Take. ... Read More
