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Environment › Protected areas and habitats

Marine and coastal ecosystems

Coasts and seas as ecosystems: mangroves, coral reefs, seagrass, estuaries and lagoons, coastal regulation and erosion, marine protected areas and the treaties for the high seas. Prelims has asked what blue carbon is and where India has coral reefs.

UPSC has asked

  • Prelims 2026: why mangroves matter for climate resilience
  • Prelims 2018: coral reefs
  • Prelims 2016: The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB)
  • Prelims 2014: where India has coral reefs

Showing 2 of 7 subjects, those that changed from 16 to 31 August 2026.Show all

National report on deep-sea fishery resources

Copy link to National report on deep-sea fishery resources

Prelims and Mains

Below the reach of the light the sea is still crowded, and India has now read its own deep water to say where that crowding is. The reading matters because the same banks and slopes that hold the fish are the ones a fleet could strip.

  • The mesopelagic zone, 200 to 1,000 m down, holds lanternfishes, deep-sea shrimps and squids.
  • The Ministry of Earth Sciences released a national report on deep-sea fishery resources, drawing on more than 400 cruises of the research vessel Sagar Sampada.
  • It flags Kollam Bank, Angria Bank, the Mangalore slope, the Thiruvananthapuram terrace, Lakshadweep and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands as vulnerable areas.

What changed

  1. 20 Aug 2026

    PIB, 20 Aug 2026: National report on deep-sea fishery resources and marine hotspots (opens in a new tab)

Marine fish stock accounts

Copy link to Marine fish stock accounts

Prelims and Mains

The report says where the fish are and what a fleet could take from them, but not what that taking would cost. The statistics ministry is now working out how to put the answer in the national accounts.

  • Natural Capital Accounting records natural assets and their depletion, which gross domestic product (GDP) misses.
  • The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) set out how it would build such accounts for India's marine fish stocks.
  • MoSPI is testing them under the United Nations System of Environmental-Economic Accounting.

  1. Judge the stock

    Compare current landings with ten years of landing data

  2. Resource rent

    Income left after labour, costs, depreciation and a normal return on vessels

  3. Discount

    Future rents brought to present value at a 2% real rate

  4. Asset account

    Shows whether the stock is maintained, depleted or regenerating

MoSPI's proposed method for marine fish stocks, from The Hindu, 31 August 2026

What changed

  1. 31 Aug 2026

    The Hindu, 31 Aug 2026: India's plan to begin natural-capital and climate-risk accounting of its blue economy | Explained (opens in a new tab)

  2. 6 Jul 2026Updatealso in news

    • The government says 91.1 per cent of 135 fish stocks assessed in 2022 were sustainable. The Food and Agriculture Organization is more cautious, and critics note that the assessment relies on landing data rather than surveys at sea, and that trawling damages the seabed on India's narrow continental shelf.

    The Hindu, 6 Jul 2026: The real crisis in India's fisheries (opens in a new tab)

Also filed elsewhere