Why the sea? Why Reefwatch?
Jacques Cousteau! Though he is no longer around, he lives in the hearts of thousands like me who were inspired by his life's work to study and protect the sea. Apart from his research and the films he created, he also founded CMAS (World Underwater Federation), the rigorous divers' certification course that enables people to explore the undersea world. Cousteau's life convinced me that if we are able to impart a healthy respect for the sea in our kids, they will grow up to defend it. Reefwatch is a trust I started with a simple purpose: to study the sea and communicate the need to protect this source of all life.
And how do you hope to achieve this through children?
There is no other way. Children are the future. Reefwatch was set up to undertake serious scientific investigations, whose complicated lessons we hope to bring to children in simple ways, through workshops, camps, books and films. Kids are like sponges… they absorb everything... corals, shells, crabs and sharks… we teach children to love and respect them all.
Ever since 'Jaws', sharks evoke fear and revulsion. Yet you care so deeply about them?
You need to be with me in a shark pit with 18 grey reef sharks to understand just why. The experience is surreal, like being part of a water-colour canvas. I have dived with sharks. Observed them. I know they are among the world's most perfectly evolved, yet hopelessly misunderstood creatures. You feel the same way about tigers. In the wild, both are relatively slow-breeding apex predators and both are dying because their habitats are being degraded and hunters are slaughtering them ruthlessly.
And how do you convince 'non-believers' that sharks need saving?
By using 'common sense science' to convey what needs to be done. For instance, sharks prey on octopus, which in turn prey on lobsters. If you kill the sharks, octopus numbers will rise. Fisherfolk will be unable to catch lobsters and will suffer financially. The same holds true for coral damage. When reefs vanish, with them go scores of commercially valuable species on which large and small fisherfolk depend. The most conclusive evidence supporting this is the plummeting fish catch all along India's coastline and in our territorial waters.
How did the sea creep into the life of someone born in the Himalaya?
It's not just the sea. It's rivers, forests, deserts… My parents brought me up in the Dooars of West Bengal, where my father worked with Duncun Brothers, a British tea company. They gifted me my love for nature. Everyday was an 'outdoorsy' day, no neighbours for miles... our bungalow lay in the middle of a thick forest. I saw my first tiger when I was four; my father slowed his car down, asked us to roll our windows up and watch silently. I remember its eyes as the cat got up gracefully and walked by our car, virtually brushing the front fender. I get goose bumps just talking about it! It's not the sea, or the mountains, or tigers, or sharks. It's all things bright and beautiful.
And that presumably includes Prahlad, your wild and inimitable ad film-maker husband?
He is wild, no doubt! But most people don't know him. He struts about Mumbai like an animal prowling the page three parties, but the only time he is truly alive is under the sea where he can be one with the universe.
When did the sea come into your life?
Prahlad had gone to Mauritius for a film shoot more than 15 years ago and there he met someone who was to change both our lives forever. I still think Hugues Vitry is more fish than human. Prahlad saw him at the pier with a boatload of divers and asked if he would 'take him down' just to show him what diving was about. At first Hugues refused, but then Prahlad's legendary ability to get his way kicked in and the next morning Prahlad was under water. He fell in love with the water-world and soon I did too. Prahlad saw a copy of the Koran on that dive, billowing on the sandy bottom. He gave it to the Islamic Department of the local university. I still wonder what kind of sign that was!
And now it would appear the whole family has sea salt in its veins!
Our first-born is Arnav, which means ocean. We named our second boy Varun, or lord of the ocean. And Anhjin, the littlest, is 'pilot of the seas' in Japanese. Yes, all five of us are part of the 'blue' in our blue planet.
When did you start diving?
Almost the day we returned from Mauritius, Prahlad organised training sessions, with help from naval divers, in the Sea Rock Hotel swimming pool in Bandra. We returned to Mauritius the next year, but I was terrified when I saw the cold, dark green sea (we went off-season to save money!) and refused to dive. Holding both my hands, Prahlad and Hugues convinced (coerced) me to go down 'just once'. And miraculously, the sight of the gentle sandy sea bed just a few metres under the surface instantly reassured me. Magically, all fear vanished. Nothing anyone had said prepared me for what I experienced... a moray eel in its cave, a balloon-like puffer fish, jacks, schools of small tropical fish. I was hooked. When I came up after my first dive, I could not talk for quite a while. I felt transported, as if I had been through a religious, spiritual experience.
Can anyone become a diver? It must have been hard work becoming an instructor?
You should know! After all, I put you through your paces before you took to scuba diving! Actually, once you get used to the breathing apparatus, overcome the claustrophobia (if I could do it, anyone can!) and if you have the right instructors, all it takes is discipline, determination and practice. It helps if you fall in love with the sea as so many divers have done. But if you want to progress beyond recreational diving, you must be prepared for commando-style training: marathon swimming, free-diving, rescue-diving and first aid. I needed a holiday after my 'holiday', which turned out to be eight days of practical and theory exams. Eventually, I did become India's first woman CMAS instructor. Anyone can become a diver, but this is not a casual, carefree involvement. You must first learn to respect the sea and everything in it.
How does one qualify as an instructor?
Once you pass the two and three-star level, you can opt for advanced instructor-level diving certification. This involves a one-month apprenticeship: cleaning up the dive centre, filling scuba tanks, lugging them onto the boat, kitting and de-kitting tanks while exhausted and then, when both body and soul are in despair, sitting through evenings loaded with diving physics and life-saving rescue lectures! Then you will have to learn what decompression sickness is. Just when you think you've got the hang of it, you must prove that you can bring up a 'diver in distress' twice your weight, free-finning, without any air in your Buoyancy Control Jacket (BCJ) from a depth of 25 m. As if that is not bad enough, you then discover that your instructor has moved the boat so you have to tow your inert 'victim' 100 m.,de-equip him and administer first aid. You are being assessed every minute of the three-dive-a-day period of 10 days.
Is all this weighted against women, a male-dominated domain?
I don't think so. I was the only woman doing the instructor's course and I did have to prove myself to be capable of doing what everyone else could (primarily lug really heavy equipment about!), but I finally topped my class. Even if I say so myself, I am a safe person to dive with because I respect the sea, refresh my theory constantly and (perhaps, thanks to the lack of machismo) never, ever take unnecessary risks.
Your husband runs Lacadives, a commercial outfit; Reefwatch is a non-profit one. Are you ever in conflict?
That depends on what you mean by 'commercial' and 'conflict'. Lacadives does not put any bread on Prahlad's table. If anything, it's the other way round! His profession is film-making. He started Lacadives because he felt that India's marine environment was being destroyed. Unlike most ocean-fronted nations, Indians are not encouraged to look below the surface of the sea. Lacadives was set up to change all this. It seeks to be self-supporting, while sustaining professional divers who can rely upon world-class scuba equipment (a life-and-death matter). Reefwatch sometimes uses Lacadives' equipment and Lacadives imparts free scuba training to selected NGOs, the Coast Guard, forest and Navy personnel. Reefwatch is a registered Charitable Trust that hires its own staff, organises its own boats and runs independent programmes funded through grants. There is no scope for conflict.
How would you compare the Andamans and Lakshadweep, India's finest coral habitats?
I know Lakshadweep's coral islands, sandy beaches and gentle high-visibility seas much better, for I have dived here for years. The Andaman archipelago undoubtedly commands more awe. The tropical littoral and rainforests are thick and mysterious. The Andaman Sea seems to be more plankton-rich and consequently the visibility is lower. The fringing reefs around the islands are watered by swift currents and the coral diversity there is streets ahead of the Lakshadweep. Both, however, are suffering the affliction of tourism gone wrong - plastic bags, oil and pollution, unseemly construction. Such evidence is conspicuous by its absence in the Andaman Sea below the 100 Channel in the Nicobar group of islands.
Some people are advocating aggressive tourism for this area.
That would be a disaster. The corals here mirror the diversity one sees in the rainforest in terms of their immense value and unstudied state. These waters are breeding grounds for fish and should be protected strictly as they could feed the Indian people long after our tired soils have been depleted. I hope the island authorities have the good sense to keep 'development' and tourism far away from the Nicobars. No sound financial mind would advocate such an initiative as the far-flung location of these islands would render tourism unviable because of the logistics involved. The real threat to these isles comes from Indonesian and Thai poachers who take sharks, sea cucumbers, crocodiles and all the fish they can catch because we do not equip our forest department or Coast Guard as we should.
What should India be doing - or not doing - to protect its marine habitats?
Reefwatch is asking that we at least take the first step by properly documenting our coral diversity. We have worked with the Coast Guard and with Sanctuary to survey sharks, corals and other marine fauna in the Nicobars and we received tremendous support from the Ministry of Environment, which agreed to place several highly threatened and endangered species on Schedule I of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. It would help greatly if economists and developers realised the true worth of places such as the Gulf of Kutchh and Mannar, the turtle nesting beaches of Gahirmatha and the mangroves of the Sunderbans. All these are being exploited for short-term financial gains.
Can you name a few examples?
Take the case of the Marine National Parks at Pirotan and in the Gulf of Mannar, both habitats of the dugong, an endangered marine mammal. The former is fast being degraded thanks to oil pollution and mangrove destruction and the latter is threatened by plans to cut a new navigation channel through the Palk Straits. Sanctuary has often pointed out that a nuclear reactor and steamer channel threaten the tiger's Sunderbans home. The Dhamra port in Orissa threatens the olive ridley turtle. It took extraordinary effort to prevent shipping firm P&O from harming marine breeding grounds at Dahanu in Maharashtra, only to have another mega-port proposed at Umbergaon, only a few kilometres to the north. People simply do not understand that the consequences of marine degradation will be financially ruinous for India.
Would you say that India even has a Marine Park management plan in place?
Frankly, no. You cannot expect officers with terrestrial training to suddenly evolve the skills to manage marine habitats. Our staff needs to visit and interact with people who protect areas like Australia's Great Barrier Reef, Baja in California and Ras Mohammad in the Red Sea. Not only are policies laid down there by marine biologists, but the laws are strictly implemented without political interference. It is little wonder then that you see thousands of barracuda, hundreds of dolphins and turtles, pristine corals and unpolluted sands there, even where tourism is allowed.
What could we do in places such as Wandoor in the Andamans or Pirotan in the Gulf of Kutchh to bring about such positive change?
I have a really long list. Keep oil away from Pirotan. Rotate tourism in Wandoor by closing some areas for five years to allow natural regeneration. Place curbs on fishing in and around the reefs to allow dwindling fish stocks to regenerate. In terms of dive tourism, charge a reasonably high fee from each diver in the vicinity of protected areas, but use common sense. If fees are prohibitive, unscrupulous dive operators will exploit India's legendary propensity for bribes to 'cheat' the dive location of any fee at all. Don't get ego-fragile; ask for help to manage marine ecosystems from experts, if necessary, overseas experts with more experience than we have. They could, for instance, help the local authorities to establish a system of mooring buoys so that no boats are allowed to drop anchor on fragile corals.
Can local people ever benefit from coastal and marine tourism?
Not if the business is left in the hands of people whose vision is limited to converting sand and mangroves into cement and concrete. Not if officials refuse to act when tour operators and tourists deposit their pollution and garbage in paradise. Not if hotels are allowed to 'mine' destinations and cut corners by dumping raw sewage. Not if 'locals' merely means the local politicians and their cronies.
How then can it be made to work?
It all boils down to that amorphous word, 'education'. If people who live along the coast and on our islands can be educated as to the value and worth of the areas in which they live and if they can be guaranteed a part of the income that comes from every single paying customer, limited, controlled tourism might even play a positive role in protecting some marine areas. But at this juncture, this seems to be wishful thinking.
Tell me something more about sharks and your battle to protect them?
I think all the money Spielberg made should now be devoted to restoring the image of sharks. In all the world's oceans, except where they are protected, their numbers have fallen drastically, thus threatening several species. The tragedy is compounded by the fact that they are hunted for their fins (they are hauled on board, their fins sliced off and the sharks then thrown back to die slowly). In India, most people don't even eat shark meat as it has high levels of uric acid. But because commercial fish species are in decline, they hunt them for fins, which are exported (to thicken soups) often at shockingly high prices.
Have you seen Mike Pandey's whale shark film?
Yes, it is one of the most touching documentaries of man's shortsightedness that I have ever seen. Reefwatch has had it translated for exhibition to local fisherfolk. The whale shark story is too tragic for words. These gentle giants are so easy to kill because they come up to the surface to warm their bodies, oblivious to the danger from boats that come right up to them and harpoon them. And the locals earn a pittance. They could earn twice as much by just showing people the sharks (the charges in Australia go as high as $500 a trip!). But all this requires a considerably more proactive and sensitive outlook than I can currently see on display by decision-makers.
So what lies in store for marine India?
I think my son Arnav presents the best answer to that question. He is already a One Star diver at 13 years, the youngest Indian to be certified (by another instructor as CMAS prohibits parents from certifying their children). He has a very healthy respect for the sea. He represents the new Indian, the generation that will ultimately save or not save our seas. I have already seen how his instincts are honed. He looks at the sea from the boat and says, "Mom, there will be a lot of jellyfish in the water, be careful." Sure enough, we encounter thousands silhouetted against the light at the end of the dive. "Today looks like a dolphin day," he says, and true enough they appear as though on instruction. Children like him understand that it is the fishing community that has the first lien on the sea and together with them, they will, hopefully, be able to do what we have failed to do… protect the seas that surround us.
