The swamp seemed never-ending. Only crabs gave me company as I plodded knee-deep in the marsh. The voice of my field guide, only 10 feet ahead, was muffled by the…
Davidson Anthony Adima started fishing as a 12-year-old, in the coastal waters of southwestern India, on a traditional log raft called kattumaram, propelled by sails and oars. Three decades later,…
Every day, for the last 14 years, 52-year-old Hemangi Kubal sails out to sea at 1 a.m. to start her workday as the sole fisherwoman of Malvan taluka – a…
The Konkan region, along India’s west coast, has been a tourist attraction for several years now. Nestled between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea, this region has beaches, waterfalls,…
The government of India is going all guns blazing on the “holistic development” of the Great Nicobar Island with a multi-component mega project. An international container trans-shipment terminal, a military-civil…
Read part 1 of this series to understand Karnataka's port-based development spree and what it means for the people living on the coast. In part 2, find out how a road…
Read part 1 of this series to understand Karnataka's port-based development spree and what it means for the people living on the coast. Part 3 looks at one such minor…
Karnataka is on a port-development spree. The 320-kilometre coastline, spread across three districts – Uttara Kannada, Udupi, and Dakshin Kannada – is dotted with 12 minor ports, and one major…
This summer it will be thirty years since the Rio Earth Summit. Unlike the earlier decadal anniversaries, this year the United Nations is not celebrating an event to mark the…
At 5 p.m. on February 10, at least 30 residents of Chellanam, a coastal village near Kochi in central Kerala, gathered on the side of the village road. The group…
Most of the sandy beaches and bays of Goa, India’s smallest state, are dominated by tourism and fishing. Yet in the low tide pools along the a 100 km long…
Tropical storms, in the last 21 years, have had an overall positive impact on the ability of mangroves in India to fix carbon dioxide, a key climate-warming greenhouse gas, says…
Born into a marginalised family in 1937 in Kerala, his umbilical cord looked almost like a bloated seed of a common mangrove tree. So, his parents who worked as farm…
India is estimated to have a potential of around 54 gigawatts (GW) of ocean energy – tidal power (12.45 GW) and wave power (41.3 GW) – but it is yet…
Purnima Meher, a 76-year-old resident, dodges big black lumps on the sand. She then stands by the mangroves on the shore of Mahim village in Maharashtra, looking at a stranded…
For the past two decades, the catch and trade of seahorses has been banned in India. However, a new study reveals that 13 million seahorses are estimated to have been…
Sediment cores harvested from beneath the seafloor in the Bay of Bengal, off the Indian coast, have uncovered that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and related warming were “major players” in…
India is a mega-biodiverse nation. It is home to 7-8% of the recorded species of the world. Its marine ecosystems are equally biodiverse: of the 32 animal phyla known to…
Shilpa Gayen shudders to recall the moment when she almost lost her life after strong winds blowing in her village brought down her mud house on May 26, the day…
As Mangalore resident Spandana walked on to Padukere beach in the first week of April, a menacing sign restricting the entry of anyone connected with the marina project on to…
