Estuaries of Littoral Countries other than India

The Indian Ocean occupies an area of 73 × 10 6 km 2 — excluding the marginal seas — between its northernmost extremity to 40°S latitude. It is a huge area extending from eastern Africa to western Australia and bordered on the north by the Asian subcontinent. The area consists of thirty-six littoral and eleven hinterland states inhabited by 1.7 billion of the world’s population of 5.92 billion having a population density of 689 persons per square kilometre. A large number of rivers and their tributaries flow through these countries, but only fourteen of them actually border the Indian Ocean and they have several river estuaries meeting the ocean. Compared to the other oceans the Indian Ocean receives runoff from mainly equatorial and tropical regions, since in its northern part it is cut off from the colder regions by the Asian continent, while in the south there is no landmass beyond about 40°S. 1 The sources of the rivers of the Asian subcontinent are mountain glaciers, rain-fed lakes and naturally-occurring geological depressions-turned large reservoirs. As a result almost all the rivers are perennial and their estuaries are of the “drowned river valley” or “coastal plain” type.