“Trawling-Project Bhai Bhai, Ek dori-te fansi chai” (Trawling and shrimp culture are brothers and both need to be hanged with the same rope) The Bengali couplet has been a popular…
Under the rain clouds playing hide and seek, artisanal deep-sea vessels lay docked close to one another at Thengapattinam harbour, 45 kilometres north of the cape of South India in…
Rhino rays form a distinct and important group of elasmobranchii, a subclass of cartilaginous fish that comprises rays and sharks. However, there is limited information on rhino rays, and 15…
There are three commercially important tuna species in the Indian Ocean, and all of them are at risk. One of the prickliest issues for tuna fisheries in the world is…
It was a sunny day with partial clouds, in Rameswaram, an island separated from the mainland of Tamil Nadu. Behind the Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam Memorial, a president’s mausoleum and…
Until a decade and a half ago, mola fish (Amblypharyngodon mola), a small indigenous species (SIS), was an integral part of Odia cuisine. However, with changing climatic conditions, pollution, excessive…
Prasanjit Mandal, 30, lives in Farakka, West Bengal, and his traditional line of work is fishing. However, these days, he also drives an autorickshaw to make a living. At times,…
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…
An MBA graduate, an engineer, and a Self-Help Group (SHG) member – that's the diversity of entrepreneurs taking up cage aquaculture in Odisha under the state’s Reservoir Fishery Policy. The…
Barnamali Malik, 40, sailed his country-made boat through the Kharasota river, that flows parallel to his village in Odisha, for seven hours on a Wednesday. The tiring sail however ended…
Pokkali rice is a saline-tolerant, indigenous rice variety grown in the Alappuzha, Thrissur and Ernakulam districts of Kerala. In Malayalam, Pokkam means height and Aali means plant. This lesser-known rice variety…
The eastern coastal state of Odisha, with a 480-kilometre long coastline, has been imposing two fishing bans annually for over two decades in order to conserve the fish population and…
On grounds of rejuvenating the Loktak lake in Manipur, the Loktak Development Authority (LDA), on July 18, issued a 15-day ultimatum to remove homestays, huts, and athaphums (artificial structures of…
On what seemed to be a pleasant morning on the seaside, a group of tourists boating in Pigeon Island National Park in eastern Sri Lanka were in for an unpleasant…
“One February evening in 2022, a fisherman alerted me of a massive sea creature trapped in their fishing net on Vizag’s shore,” narrates Srikanth Mannepuri, photographer and wildlife conservationist from…
In 2018, fishery scientist Ashim Nath, with the help of local fisher community, netted the hilsa fish along upstream and downstream locations on the Hooghly river on India’s east coast.…
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…
“Vizhinjam was once known as the harbour of pro-creation,” Father Michael, parish priest of Lady of Good Voyage Church in Vizhinjam, Kerala, told Mongabay-India. But today, the reality is different.…
It was a calm October night over Sri Lanka’s northern seas, the silence broken only by the sound of a rapidly approaching motorboat from India. In Kalpitiya, a town further…
