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…
In a recent study, marine biologists forewarn a decline in sea snake populations at the Malvan coast, a major landing port in southern Maharashtra. The authors flag that mechanised vessels are…
The aquatic life in the freshwater streams of Kashmir faces threats from riverbed mining and rising pollution. Increasing mechanised riverbed mining in the river Jhelum and its tributaries, to extract…
A concrete mixer mixing construction materials for laying roads and the cattle grazing what’s left of the grass in a greying land, become co-authors in the ethnographic documentary Not Just…
Twenty years ago, when Gurul Mangellpeli (45) used to go fishing, he would find many varieties of fishes such as pulusa (Indian shad), erameenu (Emperor), karava (Lethrinus) and more, just…
When the night’s darkness descends over the waters of Son Beel, the largest wetland in Assam and the second largest in Asia, Rotish Das, 33, sets out to catch fish…