India has just built its first ship designed solely to fight marine pollution.

Not a patrol vessel adapted later. Not a multi-purpose ship doing environmental work when needed. But a pollution control vessel, planned, designed, and built in India, for the specific task of stopping oil spills before they spread into fishing grounds, beaches, and coastal ecosystems.

The ship is called Samudra Pratap. Built in Goa by Goa Shipyard Limited, it was commissioned into the Indian Coast Guard in early January 2026. At 114.5 metres long, weighing 4,200 tonnes, with an endurance of 6,000 nautical miles and a top speed of over 22 knots, it is also the largest ship in the Coast Guard’s fleet.

Its arrival comes at a moment when India’s seas are under growing pressure from rising shipping traffic, offshore activity, and climate-driven risks that make accidents at sea harder to predict and contain.

Oil spills do not usually happen where their damage is finally felt.

Most occur far offshore, during shipping accidents or fuel transfers. But oil spreads immediately, carried by currents and wind. It moves into fish breeding zones, settles into mangroves and coral systems, and drifts steadily toward the coast.

By the time pollution reaches land, the impact is no longer just environmental.

India’s fisheries sector directly supports around 28 million people, and the country produced 44.95 lakh tonnes of marine fish in 2023–24. When oil contaminates fishing grounds, families can lose weeks or months of income. When........

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