Highlight the various ecological problems associated with the exploitation and utilization of resources from the Indian Ocean.

Living resources

• Overfishing and illegal, unreported, and unregulated catch have cut tuna, shark, and demersal stocks; bottom trawling smashes benthos on the Indian shelf, including off Kerala and the Bay of Bengal.
• Bycatch of turtles, dolphins, and juvenile fish, plus the use of destructive gear in coral and mangrove nurseries, empties the food web that coastal fishers in India, Sri Lanka, and island states depend on.
• Aquaculture on former mangrove (parts of the Sundarbans fringe and Tamil–Andhra coast) trades a nursery habitat for ponds that discharge saline, antibiotic-laden effluent.

Non-living resources and traffic

• Offshore oil and gas (Bombay High and other basins) risk blowouts and chronic small spills; tanker routes through the Strait of Hormuz, Malacca approaches, and around Sri Lanka add operational discharge and wreck risk.
• Exploration for polymetallic nodules in the central Indian Ocean basin threatens slow-growing abyssal fauna if mining stirs sediment plumes.
• Sand, coral, and coastal limestone mining for construction destroy reefs and beaches in Lakshadweep, the Maldives, and parts of the Andaman–Nicobar chain.
• Warming, acidification, and coral bleaching are worsened by local land-based pollution—untreated sewage, plastic, and agricultural runoff—entering the same water that tourism and ports use.

Islands, coasts, and climate coupling

• Port expansion, dredging, and reclamation (western Indian ports, Colombo, and island airstrips) alter longshore sediment and smother seagrass and reef.
• Deep-water oil, naval and commercial noise, and seismic surveys disturb marine mammals in a basin that is also a whale corridor.
• Resource races ignore that monsoon mixing and transboundary currents move harm from one EEZ to another; piracy-era dumping and wartime wrecks add legacy toxins.
• For India, the ecological bill of Indian Ocean use is visible in depleted inshore catch, oil-risk on the west coast, plastic on beaches, and stress on coral atolls that also serve as strategic outposts.