Marine Living Resources – A Blue Future

India’s vast exclusive economic zone (EEZ) with its rich bounty of living and non-living resources, offers a great opportunity to expand its economy and food secu­rity, and could enable sustainable development and create resilient jobs. Marine fisheries, mariculture and marine bioprospecting are significant sectors which could act as the next big drivers of the GDP and public welfare. Marine biodiversity documentation sporadically requires innovative techniques using genomics in combination with underwater imagery to cover the full spectrum of marine living resources. Deep waters beyond 500 m depth are not optimally exploited and offer immense scope for commercial exploitation. The mariculture sector, despite the wide array of candidate species, is still in its infancy and requires the use of genetic engineering to develop breeds suitable for the mariculture systems. Employing new analytical technologies and a wide range of ‘multiomics’ tools can enhance the bioprospecting of numerous marine living resources, which have the potential to unravel hundreds of new compounds for human well-being. Ascertaining the continuity of the blue economy demands judicious management of oceanic resources through innovative and sustainable practices.