By Shiba Desor The Karen community settled in the Andaman Islands in the early 1920s. A forest-dependent community from erstwhile Burma, the Karens quickly developed linkages with the natural environment of the islands. Along with having a good traditional and developed knowledge of the forest and the sea, the Karens are adept craftspersons of wood,…
Commercialisation of Fisheries Bycatch Trisha Gupta, Chetan Rao, Muralidharan M, Kartik Shanker, Naveen Namboothri Commercial fisheries catch a large volume and diversity of non-target species in their nets, known as bycatch. Although once discarded, with diminishing catches of commercial species and a growing demand for seafood and other products, many bycatch species are increasingly retained…
Part 3: James & Co. James quickly made friends with many of the participants and organisers by hanging out at the nearby chai shop. He was even invited for a game of “patti” and a drink where he also became quite attached to a few of the local boys whom he took under his wing…
By Mythreyi K People from Kumirmari can be broadly classified into two types. The first type are landed farmers who grow rice and have 5 to 8 acres each, excluding the space in which their houses are built. These are the supposedly well-to-do half of the population. A huge part of their house is built…
By Mythreyi K In early December James and I went to the island of Kumirmari in the Sunderban area to conduct a bird watching workshop for budding tourist guides in the area. Over a span of 4 days, we assisted them in identifying about 35 resident and migrant birds. Sunderban, “the only Mangrove-Tiger land of…
Learning Centre in the Andamans By Mahira Kakajiwala, Sadaf Sethwala and Karishma Modi Despite the loud discourse on the quality of education, a large number of school going children continue to rote learn their way through academia and are not independent readers or writers by the end of elementary school. As part of the “Islands…
Trawler Bycatch at Malvan By Trisha Gupta We’ve been monitoring sea snake assemblages in fishing nets at Malvan, Maharashtra, for a couple of years now and have been studying the impact of fishing on sea snake ecology. This year we’ve added some new components to this project, one of which involves the monitoring of low-value…
From Monitoring to Management: Big words for the bigger picture By Ajithraj R. and Ishaan Khot We have been conducting a community-based fisheries monitoring program in the Lakshadweep Islands since 2014. Our presence in the islands over the past few years, interactions with the fishing community and outreach activities such as the Fish for the Future calendar…
Strengthening community participation in coastal governance in the Andaman and Nicobar islands Marianne Manuel, Aarthi Sridhar, Naveen Namboothri The Island Protection Zone Notification 2011 (IPZ 2011) is the first notification published by the Ministry of Environmental and Climate Change of the Government of India, covering the archipelagos of the Andaman and Nicobar and Lakshadweep islands.…
Support to the Odisha Marine Resources Conservation Consortium (OMRCC) Aarthi Sridhar, Kartik Shanker, Muralidharan M In 2004, Dakshin played an instrumental role in supporting the formation of the Odisha Marine Resources Conservation Consortium, which is a network of Odiya traditional fishworker’s unions, conservation organisations, development NGOs, sea-turtle biologists and others interested in sea turtle conservation…