By bringing the benefits and the knowledge of science to their people, Haseena and Tajunnisa have helped secure the future for the resources on which their families depend. Their home, Agatti, has, now become a model, writes Papri Sri Raman.
10 March 2009 – Kavaratti (WFS) – On January 29, Haseena and Tajunnisa, two young women from the beautiful Agatti island in Lakshadweep, received the 2008 Earth Heroes ‘Young Naturalist’ awards, given annually by ‘Sanctuary’ magazine in collaboration with the Royal Bank of Scotland. This unusual recognition came to these women, who are in their 20s, for their spectacular effort in mobilising a fishing community to become the keepers of nature.
Their story began five years ago, when the Mumbai-based Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) was entrusted with the job of studying the giant clam in the waters off Lakshadweep’s west coast.
Lakshadweep is India’s smallest Union Territory, beginning about 250 kilometres west off the Kerala coast. It comprises 12 atolls, three reefs and five submerged banks. There are 36 tiny islands on these sub-marine banks, with a total area of just about 32 sq. kilomtres.
The islands are scattered and remote, each fringed by white coral sand and shallow lagoons protected by reef walls. They are the only coral islands in India. Ten of these are home to about 60,000 people. The island group’s Gross Domestic Product from coconut, tuna, tourism, and sea-faring touches almost Rs.100 million, with the tuna canning factories concentrated on the Minicoy Island, the second largest and southern-most among the islands of the Lakshadweep archipelago.
More than 40,00,000 tons of tuna is caught in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans every year. In 2004, the Federal Drug Authority (FDA) frowned upon the intake of excessive tuna by pregnant women, nursing mothers and children, as it is believed to contain a large quantity of mercury. Light tuna, low in mercury content, is found off the Lakshadweep coast and this is now a thriving industry.
Tuna, a very large fish, feeds on small bait-fish, like minnow and anchovy. The availability of bait-fish is an indicator of the concentration of tuna in an area. Giant clams, too, live in association with bait-fish. The giant clam also harvested for food and as a curio, is listed as a ‘vulnerable’ species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
“The BNHS-lead International Marine Protected Area project (funded by the Darwin Initiative) was to study the giant clam and try and develop conservation strategies for it, as also for bait and tuna off the Agatti coast by developing a community-managed reserve,” says Deepak Apte, Assistant Director, BNHS. Apte, who is associated with the project, recently addressed a gathering of the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers in Chennai, which met to discuss the viability of India’s marine protected areas.