What is the use of oceans for humans?

Food, livelihood, and coastal settlement

• Marine capture fisheries and aquaculture supply protein and employment; India ranks among the world’s large fish producers, with landing centres from Veraval to Tuticorin and the 2002 Marine Fishing Regulation framework in the states.
• Mangroves, coral reefs, and estuaries protect coasts and nurseries; the Sundarbans and the Gulf of Mannar show how settlement depends on those buffers.
• Salt production, seaweed, and pearls are older ocean trades still in use.

Transport, trade, and power

• Oceans carry the bulk of world merchandise by volume; Indian Ocean lanes through the Strait of Hormuz, Malacca, and the Suez Canal are India’s energy and export lifeline.
• Ports such as Mumbai, Chennai, Paradip, and Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, and the Sagarmala programme, treat the sea as national logistics, not only a beach.
• Navies and sea-based nuclear deterrence use ocean depth for security, which is a human political use even when it is not commercial.

Energy, minerals, and climate services

• Offshore oil and gas — Bombay High, discovered in 1974 — and emerging offshore wind, tidal, and ocean thermal energy conversion add to the energy mix.
• Polymetallic nodules, cobalt crusts, and methane hydrates in areas claimed under UNCLOS (1982) and the International Seabed Authority are a future mineral use; India holds exploration contracts in the central Indian Ocean.
• Oceans store heat and carbon, drive the Indian monsoon through differential heating, and supply desalinated water in Gulf states and increasingly in Indian coastal cities.
• Tourism, undersea cables for the internet, and waste dumping are further uses; the last is a misuse that returns as cyclone damage and plastic in the food chain.