Ministry of Shipping declared 106 rivers as national waterways that needed to be developed for inland water transport. This task was given to Inland Waterways Authority of India which surveyed the rivers and identifed those with maximum potential for water transport. NW 97 in the Sunderbans Delta region in West Bengal was one such river as it served as an all important Indo Bangladesh Protocol Route to carry essential commodities between the two countries under a trade agreement. We deployed two cutter suction dredges to remove the shoals that hindered the movement of cargo vessels and to ensure that 2.5m of depth was available at all times for water transport