Dakshin’s work on reduction fisheries – latest updates from Mangalore

By Abhilasha Sharma | After a thorough planning and ideation phase, our project on reduction fisheries has now taken off in full swing! Reduction fisheries refer to the conversion or reduction of fish caught from the oceans into products like fish meal and fish oil (FMFO) to make feed for industries like poultry and aquaculture. Converting large volumes of fish catch into FMFO rather than using it for direct human consumption can have multiple implications, not only for ecology, but also for the nutritional security and well-being of fishing communities. However, a lack of adequate information on the sector makes it difficult to address these implications. In its initial phase, this project, in collaboration with WWF-India, seeks to develop a broad understanding of the reduction fisheries sector in India.

Humans of the Sea – Saw Thesorow

“I met Saw Thesorow in 2010, when I joined the leatherback monitoring camps in Little Andaman, where we spent 3-4 months on the remote beaches of South and West bay cut off from the outside world. Thesorow’s familiarity with the work and the place, and his quick thinking were always something we could rely on. He always trusted his instincts and had a very balanced approach to problem-solving. Through the years my relationship with him has evolved from being a field assistant, a friend, to a brother.” – Adhith Swaminathan, Base Manager, ANET

From Zoom to Wide: Life lessons from photographer Palani Kumar 

By Pradeep Elangovan | The black and white image is still floating in my mind. Whether it had colour or not, I am not able to clearly remember. The girl child in this image, with tears welling up in her eyes, watching her father’s corpse lying beside the glass dead body freezer box, still haunts me. Her father worked as a manual scavenger. The photo of the wailing woman kissing her husband’s corpse has a similar effect on me. Those two moments were given a voice by photographer Palani Kumar. Palani constantly keeps rotating his camera’s eye searching for millions of yet unspoken marginalized people and objects, presenting their hidden worlds and dreams to the world.

Harnessing agent-based models to mitigate marine conservation conflict involving saltwater crocodiles in the Andaman islands

Harnessing agent-based models to mitigate marine conservation conflict involving saltwater crocodiles in the Andaman islands Meera Anna Oommen, Kartik Shanker, Adit D’Souza, Amulya Yadav*, Deepak Subramani# Marine ecosystems around the world often experience serious conflict between a wide variety of individual and institution-level stakeholders, as conservation decisions taken to preserve these ecosystems are often characterised…

Conservation planning, human elephant conflict and coexistence in the Kaziranga-Karbi Anglong landscape

Conservation planning, human elephant conflict and coexistence in the Kaziranga-Karbi Anglong landscape Raman Sukumar*, Meera Anna Oommen, Sanjay Ajanikar, Amlan Aditya Goswami The Kaziranga-Karbi Anglong landscape in Assam, which is a crucial habitat supporting over 2000 individual elephants in the Northeast Region, also includes large swathes of human-dominated spaces. Human-elephant conflict is an emerging problem…