Turbulent mixing is important in transporting energy, heat, carbon and freshwater throughout the ocean and also plays a major role in the evolution of the large scale circulation. This study investigates the spatio-temporal variability of turbulent mixing in the eastern South Indian Ocean using a collection of data from EM-APEX profiling floats, shipboard CTD and microstructure profiles. The floats collected 1566 profiles of temperature, salinity and horizontal velocity data down to 1200 m over a period of about four months. A fine-scale parameterization is applied to the float and CTD data to estimate turbulent mixing. These estimates are compared with direct measurements of dissipation rate from microstructure profiles. Elevated mixing is observed near the sea surface, over bottom topography and in mesoscale eddies. Wind-generated near-inertial waves play an important role in the upper ocean distribution of mixing. We found that both cyclonic and anticyclonic eddies impact the distribution of turbulent mixing. Elevated mixing is observed in the warm core eddy due to trapped near-inertial waves near the surface whereas in cyclonic eddies, elevated mixing is found to be associated with downward propagating internal waves, below 500 m. The mean diffusivity over 250 – 500 m depth is O(10⁶) m² s¹ and it increases to O(10⁵) m² s¹ in 500 – 1000 m. The turbulent mixing in this region has implications for watermass transformation and large-scale circulation. Higher diffusivity (O(10⁵) m² s¹) is observed in the Antarctic Intermediate Water layer in cyclonic eddies whereas weak diffusivity is observed in the Subantarctic Mode Water layer (O(10⁶) m² s¹). In contrast, the SAMW watermass properties are strongly affected in cyclonic eddies whereas the AAIW layer is less affected.