Marine Resources of India: Harnessing Potential Amidst Environmental Concerns

India’s relationship with the ocean goes far deeper than geography. With one of the world’s longest coastlines and a vast maritime zone, the country draws enormous ecological and economic value from its marine resources. Yet this wealth is not limitless – and the growing pressure on India’s seas is raising serious questions about how long the current trajectory can be sustained. Understanding the state of India’s marine resources, the threats they face, and the steps being taken to protect them is essential for anyone thinking about the future of food, livelihoods, and coastal ecology in South Asia.

India’s marine biodiversity and fisheries
Key species and marine ecosystems
Economic significance
Threats to marine resources
Overcapacity and overfishing
Habitat degradation
Climate change
Regulations and conservation efforts
The monsoon trawl ban
Demarcation zones and gear regulations
Legal protections and institutional frameworks

India’s marine biodiversity and fisheries

India’s coastline stretches over 8,118 km, encompassing an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of 2.02 million square kilometres. This vast maritime territory is not just a geographic fact – it is the foundation of a massive fishing economy. The warm, fertile inshore waters along the western and eastern coasts are among the most productive fishing grounds in the world, yielding sardines, mackerels, shrimps, Bombay duck, carangids, croakers, and dozens of other commercially important species.

India is the second-largest fish-producing country in the world, with total fish production more than doubling from 96 lakh tonnes in 2013-14 to 195 lakh tonnes in 2024-25. Of this, the marine sector contributes around 44-45 lakh tonnes annually. Seafood exports reached Rs. 62,408 crore in 2024-25, underlining the sector’s rising global significance.

The fisheries sector is also a major source of livelihoods. Marine fisheries support approximately 16 million livelihoods across nine coastal states and four Union Territories – including fishers, processors, traders, and allied workers. Around 3,477 coastal fishing villages depend directly on the sea.

Key species and marine ecosystems

India’s marine biodiversity is remarkable in its range. The country’s waters host corals, mangroves, seagrass beds, estuaries, and open sea environments – each supporting its own web of species. The ICAR-Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) has described over 255 marine species new to science from Indian waters and maintains a database of more than 9 million catch and effort records covering over 1,000 fished species.

Major commercial fish include Indian oil sardine and Indian mackerel (together making up over half the pelagic catch), threadfin breams, croakers, penaeid prawns, and cephalopods. The Gulf of Mannar, the Lakshadweep Sea, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are particularly rich in coral biodiversity. Mangrove ecosystems along the coasts of West Bengal, Odisha, and the Andaman Islands also serve as critical nursery habitats for juvenile fish.

Economic significance

Marine fisheries contribute 1.24% to India’s Gross Value Added (GVA) in the agriculture and allied sectors. Fish is also a critical source of affordable protein for millions of coastal and rural households, making the sector central to both economic growth and nutritional security. India’s blue economy already contributes around 4% to national GDP, with fisheries and aquaculture playing a key role alongside shipping, tourism, and offshore energy.

Threats to marine resources

Despite the richness of India’s marine environment, it is under significant and growing stress. The pressures come from multiple directions – overcapacity in the fishing fleet, degradation of coastal habitats, and the long-term consequences of climate change.

Overcapacity and overfishing

Around 30% of India’s marine fish stocks are overexploited, according to CMFRI data from 2022. The inshore EEZ is being fished at close to 75% of its estimated potential, leaving little room for further sustainable expansion. The problem is compounded by fleet overcapacity – the number of mechanised trawlers far exceeds what the resource base can support.

One structural inequity makes this worse: small-scale fishers make up about 90% of the fishing community but catch only 10% of the total harvest, while large mechanised operations dominate landings. This creates both an ecological problem – concentrated fishing pressure in productive zones – and a social one, as nearly 75% of marine fisher families live below the poverty line.

Destructive practices further accelerate resource depletion. Bottom trawling disturbs the seabed and destroys habitat. Small mesh nets (below 25 mm) trap juvenile fish before they can reproduce. Overfishing has led to the degradation of coral habitats and a decline in associated marine species across several regions of India. The loss of Hilsa along the West Bengal coast and the decline of Indian oil sardines off Karnataka are well-documented examples of what happens when harvesting consistently outpaces natural replenishment.

Habitat degradation

Coastal development, untreated sewage discharge, marine plastic pollution, and oil spills are steadily degrading the habitats that underpin fish productivity. Destructive fishing gear such as trawl nets causes significant habitat loss, damaging coral reefs, seamounts, and seagrass beds that serve as breeding and feeding grounds. When these habitats decline, so does the capacity of the ocean to sustain fish populations.

Mangrove loss along India’s coastline also deserves attention. These forests act as buffers against coastal erosion, storm surges, and sea-level rise, while simultaneously functioning as nurseries for commercially important species. Their reduction shrinks the natural productivity of adjacent marine areas.

Climate change

Rising sea surface temperatures, ocean acidification, and shifting monsoon patterns are adding a new layer of complexity to marine resource management. Rising temperatures are disrupting fish breeding patterns, altering migratory routes, and intensifying cyclonic events that displace fishing communities and disrupt seasonal fishing calendars. Cyclone Amphan in 2020, for example, severely affected fishers across West Bengal and Odisha.

For CMFRI, which operates under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, climate change is now a central research concern. The institute has modelled how projected rises in sea surface temperature will affect the biomass of commercially important species like threadfin bream off the Kerala coast, and is working to equip the fisheries sector with the data and tools needed to adapt.

Regulations and conservation efforts

India has developed a layered regulatory framework for marine fisheries – spanning central legislation, state-level Marine Fisheries Regulation Acts (MFRAs), and specific conservation initiatives. The effectiveness of these measures varies, but several have demonstrated real impact.

The monsoon trawl ban

The monsoon trawl ban, introduced in the 1980s with Kerala pioneering it in 1988, is the government’s primary tool for protecting fish during their breeding season. The ban restricts mechanised fishing vessels from operating during the monsoon period – on the East Coast, from mid-April to mid-June; on the West Coast, from early June to late July.

The Central government enforces this ban within the EEZ, while state governments manage territorial waters. The rationale is straightforward: the monsoon is the prime spawning season for most commercially important marine species, and suspending mechanised fishing gives populations a chance to replenish. Artisanal fishers using traditional, low-impact methods are generally permitted to continue operating during this period, recognising both their ecological footprint and livelihood needs.

The ban is notably one of the few fisheries regulations in India that is consistently enforced, in part because fishing communities participated in designing it – a process that gave it legitimacy on the water. That said, critics point out that the ban period may not align perfectly with the spawning cycles of all target species, and small-scale fishers often find the sea depleted again within weeks of the ban lifting as industrial fleets resume large-scale operations.

Demarcation zones and gear regulations

Marine Fisheries Regulation Acts enacted by coastal states demarcate fishing zones in territorial waters, typically reserving a 5-10 km inshore band exclusively for non-mechanised, artisanal vessels. This zonation is intended to protect both the livelihoods of small-scale fishers and the nearshore habitats they depend on.

Additional gear regulations include minimum mesh size requirements (to reduce juvenile bycatch), minimum legal sizes for commercially important species, and bans on particularly destructive methods such as pair trawling, bull trawling, and the use of artificial LED lights that attract juvenile fish in large numbers. The government has also enforced bans on pair trawling and bull trawling, and promoted sea ranching and the installation of artificial reefs to rehabilitate degraded marine habitats.

Legal protections and institutional frameworks

Under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, marine species such as sea turtles, seahorses, sea cucumbers, sea fans, and certain shark and ray species are protected under Schedule I, which prohibits their hunting and trade. The Biological Diversity Act, 2002 further enables the declaration of threatened fish stocks and promotes their conservation.

At the institutional level, the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY), launched in 2020 with an outlay of Rs. 20,312 crore, is the government’s flagship scheme for developing fisheries sustainably. It supports deep-sea fishing infrastructure, artificial reef construction, mariculture, seaweed farming, and the welfare of coastal fishing communities. India is also a member of the Global Environment Facility’s Large Marine Ecosystem programme covering both the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal – two of the marine systems most critical to Indian fisheries.

Challenges remain significant. Enforcement capacity is uneven across states, regulatory gaps between jurisdictions are exploited for illegal fishing, and the patchwork of 13 separate state-level MFRAs creates inconsistencies that undermine national conservation goals. Calls for a unified national fisheries code with standardised catch limits, gear restrictions, and Minimum Legal Sizes are growing louder among fisheries scientists and policy advocates. The evidence from Kerala, where enforcing minimum size limits for threadfin bream led to a 41% increase in catch within a single season, shows clearly that science-based regulation can produce results – when it is actually applied.

What do you think? Given that 30% of India’s marine fish stocks are already overexploited, should the government prioritise stricter national-level regulations over the current state-by-state approach to fisheries management? And how can the conservation needs of India’s marine ecosystems be balanced against the immediate livelihood pressures faced by the millions of small-scale fishers who depend on the sea?

References

PDF 📄

Table of Contents

India’s marine biodiversity and fisheries 🔗

Key species and marine ecosystems 🔗

Economic significance 🔗

Threats to marine resources 🔗

Overcapacity and overfishing 🔗

Habitat degradation 🔗

Climate change 🔗

Regulations and conservation efforts 🔗

The monsoon trawl ban 🔗

Demarcation zones and gear regulations 🔗

Legal protections and institutional frameworks 🔗