Cox's Bazar, the longest sea beach in the world and Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest and the natural habitat of the Bengal tiger, are located along the bay.

A number of large rivers flow into the Bay of Bengal: the Ganges–Hooghly, the Padma, the Brahmaputra–Jamuna, the Barak–Surma–Meghna, the Irrawaddy, the Godavari, the Mahanadi, the Brahmani, the Baitarani, the Krishna, and the Kaveri.

The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Bay of Bengal as follows:[3] Note: Oedjong means "cape" in Dutch language on maps of the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia).

Northern Circars occupied the western coast of the Bay of Bengal and is now considered to be India's Odisha and Andhra Pradesh state.

[12] The earliest sign of Muslims in the region came from the textile trade routes where one targeted the east Arabian Sea influencing migration of Arabs and Persians and another to the west causing Buddhist Bengalis to culturally mix with Islam.

Stone anchors, amphorae shards, elephant tusks, hippopotamus teeth, ceramic pottery, a rare wood mast and lead ingots are examples which may survive submerged for centuries for archaeologists to discover, study, and place their salvaged findings into the timeline of history.

Coral reefs, tsunamis, cyclones, mangrove swamps, battles, and a criss-cross of sea routes in a high trading area combined with piracy have all contributed to shipwrecks in the Bay of Bengal.

It influences China's southern landlocked region in the north and major sea ports of Bangladesh and India.

[31][32][33][34] The largest ever wargame in Bay of Bengal, known as Malabar 2007, was held in 2007 and naval warships from the United States, India, Singapore, Japan and Australia took part.

[citation needed] Large deposits of natural gas in the areas within Bangladesh's sea zone incited a serious urgency by India and Myanmar into a territorial dispute.

[27] Disputes over rights of some oil and gas blocks have caused brief diplomatic spats between Myanmar and India with Bangladesh.

The Bay of Bengal in the stretch of Swargadwar, the gateway to heaven in Sanskrit, in the Indian town of Puri is considered holy by Hindus.

[citation needed]The Samudra arati is a daily tradition started by the present Shankaracharya of Puri 9 years ago to honour the sacred sea.

[37] The daily practise includes prayer and fire offering to the sea at Swargadwar in Puri by disciples of the Govardhana matha of the Shankaracharya.

The Cheduba group of islands, in the north-east, off the Burmese coast, are remarkable for a chain of mud volcanoes, which are occasionally active.

The Sundarbans is a mangrove forest in the southern part of the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta which lies in the Indian state of West Bengal and in Bangladesh.

The sediment from these three rivers form the Bengal Delta and the submarine fan, a vast structure that extends from Bengal to south of the Equator, is up to 16.5 kilometres (10.3 mi) thick, and contains at least 1,130 trillion tonnes of sediment, which has accumulated over the last 17 million years at an average rate of 665 million tons per annum.

Underneath the Bay of Bengal, which is part of the great Indo-Australian Plate and is slowly moving north east.

[47] Turbidity currents have transported the sediment through a series of submarine canyons, some of which are more than 2,400 kilometres (1,500 mi) in length, to be deposited in the Bay of Bengal up to 30 degrees latitude from where it began.

[50] Their mineralogical and geochemical characteristics allow to identify their Himalayan origin and demonstrate that the Himalaya was already a major mountain range 20 million years ago.

[52] It is bordered to the west by the continental slope of eastern India, to the north by the continental slope of Bangladesh and to east by the northern part of Sunda Trench off Myanmar and the Andaman Islands, the accretionary wedge associated with subduction of the Indo-Australian Plate beneath the Sunda Plate and continues along the west side of the Ninety East Ridge.

The remainder of the year, the counterclockwise current is southwestward flowing, and the circulation pattern is called the East Indian Winter Jet.

September and December see very active weather, season varsha (or monsoon), in the Bay of Bengal producing severe cyclones which affect eastern India.

[56] The Bay of Bengal is full of biological diversity, diverging amongst coral reefs, estuaries, fish spawning and nursery areas, and mangroves.

With the support of the Bay Of Bengal Large Marine Ecosystem Project (BOBLME), the eight countries are now (2012) developing responses to these issues and their causes, for future implementation as the Strategic Action Programme.

The major transboundary issues relating to shared fisheries are: a decline in the overall availability of fish resources; changes in species composition of catches; the high proportion of juvenile fish in the catch; and changes in marine biodiversity, especially through loss of vulnerable and endangered species.

Bay of Bengal countries contribute significantly to the global problem of loss of vulnerable and endangered species.

[citation needed] The Asian brown cloud, a layer of air pollution that covers much of South Asia and the Indian Ocean every year between January and March, and possibly also during earlier and later months, hangs over the Bay of Bengal.

Around 4 million tonnes of microplastics are estimated to come from India and Bangladesh travelling into Sundurban and subsequently the Bay of Bengal.

[citation needed] A pertinent issue is the rapid growth of the shrimp culture industry which requires use of antibiotics and chemicals for export-quality food safety but pollutes the Bay of Bengal.