New sonar scans reignite legend of ‘Krishna’s sunken kingdom’ off Dwarka

India’s most evocative maritime tale—the drowning of Lord Krishna’s capital—is back in scientific cross-hairs after fresh side-scan-sonar and multibeam surveys mapped a string of structural “anomalies” off Dwarka and Bet Dwarka this spring. Officials in the Archaeological Survey of India’s Underwater Archaeology Wing (UAW) say the grids, completed on 27 March, enlarge the searchable radius in the Okhamandal shallows and pinpoint “possible jetty walls and grapnel-type stone anchors” for targeted trenching.

An interim field note filed on 16 April lists the season’s earliest recoveries: clusters of Harappan-style stone anchors, inscribed potsherds, copper rings and an L-shaped dressed-stone segment lying 5–12 m below the eastern flank of Gomati Creek. Photogrammetric models are now being run to refine a provisional late-Harappan date of c. 1800–1500 BCE for the masonry.

This campaign is also the first to field a majority of women diver-archaeologists. A February briefing by the Ministry of Culture named Dr Aparajita Sharma, Poonam Vind and Rajkumari Barbina among the five-strong core team led by Prof. Alok Tripathi. Their initial sweeps south of Gomati Creek reopened zones first sampled in the 1980s.

Tripathi’s crew is coupling the sonar lines with high-resolution photogrammetry, sediment coring and optically stimulated luminescence dating. The twin data sets, researchers say, will let them draft a 3-D conservation plan instead of lifting stone blocks outright—an approach endorsed in a June 2025 peer-reviewed study that re-examined Dwarka’s bathymetry and proposed a calibrated chronology for a stone jetty between 1,800 and 1,500 BCE.

To staff coming seasons, the ASI opened nominations on 15 May for a two-week underwater-archaeology course—lectures in Greater Noida followed by open-water dives at Dwarka in July. Graduates are expected to join the present expedition when it resumes.

Because the Arabian Sea turns rough in summer, the UAW has pencilled in October–November 2025 for a third “ground-truthing” season. “In winter the sea will be calm. We will survey the whole area and may go for excavation thereafter,” Tripathi told The New Indian Express, noting that vegetation clearance and in-situ stabilisation top the to-do list.

Previous offshore digs (2005–07) lifted anchors, sculpture fragments and 26 cultural layers near the Dwarkadhish Temple but stopped short of proving the Mahabharata’s account of a fortified port swallowed by the sea. The current sonar grids give archaeologists their most precise targets yet—and, with fresh laboratory dates expected early next year, the best chance so far of deciding how much of Krishna’s fabled city lies in dressed stone beneath the waves.

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