The story of NIO’s truth expedition and the team that did it
October 31, Midmorning, Sinquerim Coast: A diver emergedfrom below the sea surface adjacent to a boat load of scientists and equipment.As he removed the hood off his head, an ageing sixty something man wiped thesea water off his face and looked at Dr. A K Chaubey, Chief Scientist, NationalInstitute of Oceanography. “It’s exactly the same as you had reported”, heshouted over the din of the waves. For Dr Chaubey, it is a vindication of hisstand. As the diver slipped into the boat, Dr Chaubey had reason to cheer, hisscientific data that the River Princess still lies at the bottom of the sea wasconfirmed by none other than Dr S W A Naqvi, NIO’s Director and an expertdiver. Visual confirmation always helps.
Tucked away in Dona Paula, NIO has always been an enigma ofsorts for Goans and Goa. The image that your mind conjures when you think of itis nerds, scientific jargons, laboratories, absent minded professors and thelike. NIO is much more. Its mission statement actually commits to the use ofits basic research studies also for public purposes. In the River Princess’scase it did exactly that.
“We carry out intensive desktop studies and that is why theanswers to what lay beneath came out with such clinical precision” explainsChaubey. For a man who had seen Hydro Scan make a mockery of a survey and thenbetray Goa’s trust in it by furnishing wrong data, his methodology was simple–‘stick to the basics’. A team of 13 members were chosen – four divers, a marinearchaeologist, four surveyors and instrumentation specialists led by ageophysicist. Though truth has no demography, ten of those on this truthexpedition were Goans.
The survey started on October 25 with bathymetry, study ofunderwater depths at the vessel site. The readings revealed that there weresharp rise and fall in underwater depths on a sea floor that gradually slopesinto the sea. “We knew on day one that there was wreckage below but we needed arock solid confirmation”. Over the next few days extensive side scan sonars andmagnetometry was done. “While side scan sonar reveals the sub bottom profilingor quite simply what lies embedded under different layers of sediment on thebottom of sea floor, magnetometry detects extra rise in magnetic fieldespecially if there is metal on the bottom of the sea” explains Chaubey, thehead of the expedition. By October 28, NIO had clinching evidence. Side scansonar revealed ‘a sunken ship-like structure with dimensions 180m x 40m andscattered pieces of debris’. Magnetometry affirmed the presence of largeamounts of iron metal. On October 31, the diving operations with extensiveunderwater video footage revealed what The Goan first exposed, a half gnawedRiver Princess still lay at the bottom of the sea.
