A Critical Review on Potentiality of Marine Resources of the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean: Bangladesh Perspective

The Bay of Bengal (BoB) is rich in resources (both living and non-living). Marine living resources include fisheries, mangrove forests, coral ecosystems, plankton, sea grass and seaweeds, etc. Whereas, non-living resources are oil, gas, gas hydrates, sea salt, heavy minerals, etc. Present study reveals that the oil and gas fields discovered in the BoB are parallel with exploration activities. Bangladesh part of the BoB includes the low exploration area, consequently only one producing gas field, whereas India and Myanmar discovered many significant gas and oil fields in their territory. India discovered gas hydrates in the BoB in 2016. In the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of Bangladesh, 0.11 tcf to 0.63 tcf gas hydrates were discovered in 2022, with assessment of 17-103 tcf of natural gas, though gas hydrates exploration at industrial scale is still a big challenge in the world due to stability, composition and distribution of gas hydrates in nature. Different types of heavy minerals are also present in the coastal parts of the country. The Indian Ocean has about 20% of the worldwide tuna production, though Bangladesh contributes very little of it. In the marine part of the country, 475 species of fishes are found compared to 250 species on land. BoB is very important for BIMSTEC countries and also for China and Pakistan in consideration of seaborne trade. Bangladesh can introduce modern cruises like other BoB countries to visit the coastal islands as well as Sundarbans mangrove forest contributing considerably to local employment and economic expansion. Marine organisms have unique nutritional value and contain many kinds of bioactive substances. At present, internationally recognized antibiotics of cephalosporin series, vidarabine antiviral drugs, and a series of sodium alginate marine drugs have been existing. Japan has invested manpower and material resources in seawater by extracting lithium and achieving progress. Japan, Germany, United States and Sweden have also have a certain scale of seawater extracting uranium experiment devices. Despite the challenges like lack of trained personnel, scientific equipment and poor ocean governance, Bangladesh essentially needs to take the opportunity to explore the potential marine areas.