30 articles
Agulhas Current
The Agulhas Current is the strong, warm western boundary current of the southwest Indian Ocean and the Southern Hemisphere's strongest, flowing along South Africa's east coast.
Andaman Islands
The Andaman Islands is a large archipelago located in the Bay of Bengal, forming the union territory of India that encompasses the Nicobar Islands.
Chagos Archipelago
Chagos Archipelago: 58 coral islands in the central Indian Ocean, administered as the British Indian Ocean Territory from 1965; subject of the 2019 ICJ advisory opinion and the 2025 UK-Mauritius sovereignty treaty covering Diego Garcia.
Dutch India
Dutch India: VOC (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie) trading settlements in India, 1602-1824, centered on Coromandel Coast forts at Pulicat and Nagapattinam, trading textiles for spices, ending with the 1824 Anglo-Dutch treaty.
East Indies
The East Indies, also known as the Indies, is a European term once covering India, Further India, and the Malay Archipelago, distinguished from the West Indies.
Gwadar (گوادر)
Gwadar (گوادر) is a port city on Pakistan's Arabian Sea coast in Balochistan, bought from Oman in 1958; it hosts Pakistan's third deep-sea port, the CPEC flagship, operated by China's COPHCL.
Indian Ocean Basin mode
The Indian Ocean Basin mode (IOB) is the dominant pattern of year-to-year sea surface temperature variability in the tropical Indian Ocean, a basin-wide warming or cooling.
Indian Ocean Dipole
Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), measured by the Dipole Mode Index, is a sea surface temperature seesaw between the western and eastern tropical Indian Ocean with positive, negative, and neutral phases, discovered by Saji et al. in 1999, affecting East African, Indonesian, and Australian rainfall.
Indian Ocean garbage patch
The Indian Ocean garbage patch is a poorly defined accumulation of floating plastic in the southern Indian Ocean subtropical gyre, southeast of Madagascar; unlike the Pacific and Atlantic patches it is weak, dispersive, and under-sampled, and no northern patch exists because land blocks the gyre.
Indian Ocean Geoid Low
The Indian Ocean Geoid Low (IOGL) is Earth's lowest geoid anomaly, a −106 m depression south of India caused by low-density mantle plume material generated when Tethyan slabs perturbed the African LLSVP.
Indian Ocean trade
Indian Ocean trade: maritime commerce linking East Africa, Arabia, Iran, India, Southeast Asia, and China from the Bronze Age onward, driven by monsoon winds, centered on Indian textiles and spices, and predating European entry by millennia.
Indian oil sardine
Indian oil sardine (Sardinella longiceps), a small tropical pelagic fish of the northern Indian Ocean and India's key sardine fishery, contributing 17–20% of national marine landings, centered on Kerala's Malabar upwelling zone.
Katchatheevu (கச்சத்தீவு)
Katchatheevu (கச்சத்தீவு) is a small uninhabited island in the Palk Strait, placed under Sri Lankan sovereignty by a 1974 agreement and known for its St Anthony's festival.
Leeuwin Current
The Leeuwin Current is the poleward-flowing eastern boundary current of the south Indian Ocean, carrying warm low-salinity water south along Western Australia to the Great Australian Bight, driven by the Indonesian Throughflow pressure gradient, peaking in austral winter at about 1.8 Sv.
List of islands in the Indian Ocean
Islands of the Indian Ocean, also called Indian Ocean archipelagos: about 2,000 islands from Madagascar and Seychelles to the Maldives, Chagos, and Cocos (Keeling), mostly coralline atolls by count but volcanic by area, many threatened by sea-level rise.
List of ships attacked by Somali pirates
Ships attacked by Somali pirates: merchant vessels, fishing boats, and dhows hijacked off the Horn of Africa. Over 1,000 attacks 2005–2011, a 2011 peak of 237, and a 2023–2026 resurgence seizing vessels including Honour 25, Sward, Eureka, Asana, Lutuf, and Sibu 1.
Marine life of the Indian Ocean
The marine life of the Indian Ocean is the fish, corals, mammals, and other fauna of the 70 million km² basin between Africa, Asia, and Australia.
MV Wakashio oil spill
MV Wakashio oil spill: 2020 grounding of a Japanese-owned, Panamanian-flagged capesize bulker off Pointe d'Esny, Mauritius; about 1,000 tonnes of Very Low Sulfur Fuel Oil spilled, the first major VLSFO spill, after a deliberate course deviation toward shore.
Nicobar Islands
The Nicobar Islands are the southern island group of India's Andaman and Nicobar Union Territory: 22 islands, 1,841 km², home to the Shompen and Nicobarese tribes, the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve, and the contested Great Nicobar Project.
North Indian Ocean
The North Indian Ocean is the northern portion of the Indian Ocean, comprising the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, whose currents reverse seasonally with the monsoon winds.
North Sentinel Island
North Sentinel Island: forested, ~60 sq km island in the Bay of Bengal, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India, home to the uncontacted Sentinelese; a tribal reserve with a 5 km exclusion zone under the 1956 PAT Regulation.
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (Περίπλους τῆς Ἐρυθρᾶς Θαλάσσης)
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (Periplus Maris Erythraei): anonymous Greek merchant's handbook of the mid-1st century CE describing Red Sea, Arabian, and Indian Ocean trade routes, ports, and commodities, preserved in a single Heidelberg manuscript.
Piracy off the coast of Somalia
Piracy off the coast of Somalia, or Somali piracy, is ransom-driven hijacking in the Gulf of Aden and western Indian Ocean that emerged after Somalia's 1991 state collapse, peaked in 2011, was suppressed by 2012, and resurged from 2024.
Socotra
Socotra (سقطرى), Yemeni archipelago in the northwest Indian Ocean near the Gulf of Aden; UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site 2008 with 37% endemic plants, 90% endemic reptiles, 95% endemic land snails, dragon's blood trees, and threats from goats, cyclones, and Yemen's civil war.
Somali Current
Somali Current: seasonally reversing western boundary current of the Indian Ocean off East Africa, flowing northeast in the southwest monsoon at up to 3 m/s, reversing in winter, and driving the world's strongest seasonal coastal upwelling with the Great Whirl eddy.
Spice trade
The spice trade is the historic commerce in pepper, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg that moved from India and the Spice Islands to Europe, later dominated by Portuguese and Dutch maritime empires.
St. Martin's Island
St. Martin's Island (Narikel Zinzira) is Bangladesh's southernmost island in the Bay of Bengal near Teknaf, its only coral-bearing island, with sandstone base rock, 98 hard coral species, severe shoreline erosion, and a nine-month tourism ban since 2025.
Subtropical Indian Ocean Dipole
The Subtropical Indian Ocean Dipole (SIOD), also called the Indian Ocean Subtropical Dipole, is a climate variability mode in the southern Indian Ocean identified in 2001.
Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama (c. 1460s–1524), Portuguese navigator born in Sines, commanded the first European fleet to reach India by sea around Africa (1497–1499), landing at Calicut in 1498; later Admiral of the Indian seas under Manuel I.
Wildlife of the Maldives
Wildlife of the Maldives: plants and animals of the 1,192-island Indian Ocean archipelago; 250+ coral and 1,100+ fish species, whale sharks, manta rays, endemic birds and fish, and reefs threatened by recurrent bleaching.