The coastal waters of India receive about 4.4Km sup(3) of domestic sewage and 0.44 Km sup(3) of industrial wastes, annually. A concerted effort is being made for about a decade now to assess the state of the Indian marine environment through periodic monitoring of the levels of the major pollutants. One on-going exercise has been to evaluate, qualitatively and quantitatively, the persistent organochlorine pesticide residues in the Northern Indian Ocean. The baseline levels of some of these compounds have been established as: total-DDT (DDT plus its metabolites) 0.1 to 0.44 ppb in water, 50.0 to 1630.0 ppb in zooplankton, traces to 206.1 ppb in fish and 7.4 to 179.1 ppb in sediments from the Arabian Sea. In coastal Bay of Bengal the mean values are: 4.0 to 5.9 ppb in zooplankton; 0.3 to 8.6 ppb in fish and 0.02 to 720.0 ppb in sediments. Some of the other organochlorine pesticides detected in sediments from the Bay of Bengal are: lambda -HCH (lindance) 0.01 to 0.21 ppb; aldrin 0.01 to 0.5 ppb and dieldrin 0 to 0.5 ppb