Dakshin’s reduction fisheries project sails to Palk Bay!

By E. Haripriya and Meghana Teerthala | After an intensive and insightful fieldwork at Mangalore, we set sail to Palk Bay this September to initiate reduction fisheries work in Tamil Nadu. Palk Bay is a shallow stretch of sea between India and Sri Lanka with a rich seagrass ecosystem. Besides, it is also known for its geopolitical intricacies pertaining to the fisheries sector.

We started with a rapid two-week scoping exercise covering 8 fish landing centres along Palk Bay, from Mallipattinam in the north to Rameshwaram in the south.

Building infrastructures of resilience among migrant fishers

By Satya Sainath | As part of our ongoing project on Migration and Infrastructures of Resilience of Small Scale Fishers’, we co-created Community-Databases of Migrant Fishers (CDMF) in select villages of two districts – Ganjam, Odisha, and Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu. CDMF provides vital information to gram panchayats to reach migrant workers in case of under emergencies.
We are in the process of piloting an Interactive-Voice Response (IVR) system to reach migrant fishers in these two sites. Through this IVR initiative, vital information on entitlements, welfare schemes of the state governments, health and safety information on migrant fishers and the latest judicial rulings pertaining to their rights can be shared. Read more.

CC chugs along

By Devathi Parashuram and Shivangi Pant | There have been a few changes at Current Conservation since our last newsletter update. Greta Ann Sam has been Managing Editor since April. In May, we welcomed Shivangi Pant on board, as the new Managing Editor (Art & Design). We have since published (and printed) two issues: 16.1 and the recent marine-themed 16.2. The latter has stories that span oceans, highlighting the ecology of killer whales, the need to protect swimways, the history of ambergris (whale vomit), and the use of bioacoustics in marine research, amongst other things. Read more.

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.

Humans of the Sea – Naveen Ekka

“Naveen is in his element when he’s doing fieldwork. A jack of all trades, he has served various roles as a cook, a sharp field assistant, a certified diver and an expert snake handler.” – Adhith Swaminathan (Base Manager, ANET) on Naveen.

The CWE Programme and the importance of building networks

By Kanishk Srinivasan | While working under the banner of Dakshin’s Community Wellbeing and Environment Programme, a significant chunk of our work in the last few months has been building collaborations and partnerships with other organisations, activists and experts in the various fields that we’re attempting to work in. To provide a few examples, the Health team has built collaborations with community based organizations and youth groups active in our field sites in South Andaman and Odisha. The health and livelihoods sub-programmes have also brought Dr Abhijit Das and Venkatesh Salagrama on board as advisors to learn from their expertise in these areas and to improve programme planning and implementation.

What’s brewing at Current Conservation?

By Devathi Parashuram and Greta Ann Sam | A lot, as it turns out. How is it already 2022?! Last year was action-packed for Team CC. We brought out three issues of the magazine: 15.1 and 15.2 which are, as always, freely available for download on the website. And 15.3, which was a special issue on ‘African conservation today: New trends, perspectives and opportunities’, guest edited by Fred Nelson and Gladys-Kalema Zikusoka, and launched in December 2021 at the 30th International Congress for Conservation Biology. 
Due to the volume of high quality submissions we have been receiving and the limited space in the quarterly print magazine, we are publishing more and more online-only articles. As a result of this, the total number of articles we published in 2021 was more than double that of 2020.