India's marine fishing effort has historically been concentrated inshore. Traditional and small-scale fishers work the near-shore band that States reserve for them, while the resource-rich waters between 12 and 200 nautical miles have been comparatively under-exploited by Indian small-scale operators — a zone where the constraint is not the resource but the capital, the vessel size and the regulatory pathway. The Access Pass addresses the third of these. Because it is free, digital and issued through the existing ReALCRaft vessel registration portal, it removes the licensing barrier for cooperatives and Fish Farmer Producer Organisations that want to move into deep-sea fishing, while the exemption for non-motorised and small artisanal craft ensures the regime does not become a new compliance burden on the very fishers it is meant to help. Around it, the Government has assembled the rest of the value chain: NCDC credit for vessels under PMMSY and FIDF, MPEDA and EIC certification linked to the pass so that catch is traceable and can be eco-labelled, and a Customs Act amendment making EEZ and High Seas catch duty-free with foreign-port landings treated as exports. A Joint Working Group with the Ministry of Cooperation is the institutional glue. The distribution of the 9,650 passes issued so far is revealing: Karnataka and Gujarat together account for more than half, while Tamil Nadu — a major marine fishing State — has taken just six, suggesting uptake is still very uneven.