Pulicat Lake

Pulicat Lake is a long, shallow lagoon of brackish water on the Coromandel coast, separated from the Bay of Bengal by the barrier island of Sriharikota. At its southern end stands the port of Pulicat. The Portuguese established a trading post there in 1502; the Dutch took the fort in 1609 and made the town their Coromandel capital. Ships and merchants thus gathered beside the lagoon on a coast tied to wider Indian Ocean trade.