Deep-sea opportunity

India must get the basics in place

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India’s vast marine frontier, stretching over 11,000 kilometres (km) of coastline and 2 million square km of exclusive economic zones (EEZs), hides both untapped wealth and unaddressed weakness.

In this context, a new NITI Aayog report, “India’s Blue Economy: Strategy for Harnessing Deep-Sea and Offshore Fisheries”, rightly calls out India’s underperformance in the deep-sea and offshore segment. The numbers highlighted in the report are striking. India has only four vessels owned by the Fishery Survey of India (FSI), compared to 1,883 from Sri Lanka and 1,216 from Iran in the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) region. Its marine exports, worth about $8 billion, draw the bulk of the fish from land-based aquaculture and only a tiny share comes from open-sea fishing. Contrast this with India’s marine potential. The country’s EEZs, between 12 nautical miles and 200 nautical miles offshore and beyond, harbor an estimated 7.16 million tonnes of fish, but the lack of modern fleets and regulation keeps this potential dormant.