During late boreal summer and fall, the west coast of India (WCI) experiences hypoxia, which turns into anoxia during some years. We analyze a coupled physical–biogeochemical simulation over the 1960–2012 period to investigate the physical processes influencing oxycline interannual variability off the WCI. We show that fall WCI oxycline fluctuations are strongly related to Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), with positive IODs preventing anoxia, while negative IODs do not necessarily result in anoxia.