Lakshadweep’s ecology has been imperilled by heating seas and a string of tourism projects. HT, in a series supported by the Pulitzer Center, looks at the changes that have hit the vibrant archipelago off India’s southwest coast
Kavaratti: Surrounded by great blue lagoons and the ever-changing sky, growing up in Lakshadweep for CN Nooral Hidaya was about defying stereotypes and educating herself so she could save what she loved the most — her homeland.
“Growing up in these islands, you feel like this is the entire world. There is nothing beyond our small strip of land and the ocean around it,” Hidaya, 41, and an advocate, said.
A native of Kalpeni island, she spent her childhood in Androth, Amini and Kadmat islands, before moving to Kerala for higher education, which included her law degree, finally settling in Kavaratti with her husband and daughter.
“The way of life on mainland is very different. I realised this when I was studying in Kochi,” she said.
In Lakshadweep, even a girl riding a bicycle was enough to cause a stir, said Hidaya. Now, she is the first woman practising lawyer from the island. “Women are gradually joining the mainstream,” she said.
Hidaya points out that though conservative, Lakshadweep follows a matrilineal order with girls inheriting ancestral property.
But she is now worried about a far more important inheritance; it is to ensure the islanders are not displaced. “I am worried about the new land regulations… and the tourism infrastructure, like lagoon villas, that is likely to come to the islands. How can our islands sustain this?” asked Hidaya.
This unease about the future of the island is shared by Saheer Ali, 40, a licensed diver who works at the PADI diving centre in Kavaratti. “The sea is our home. And it is changing now.”
2023 and the first half of 2024 saw a mass bleaching event in the region, with record setting heat stress observed at Lakshadweep and in southeast India (Bay of Bengal region) in 2024, according to US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
According to divers, the sea surface temperature reached 36°C. The bleaching threshold for corals is typically around 30.5°C. When water temperatures cross that red line and stay that way for an extended period, a bleaching event is triggered.
“It was as if one day all the corals turned white. It was a heart-wrenching sight,” said Ali.
Marine heatwaves starting October 2023 resulted in widespread coral bleaching in the Lakshadweep Sea, ICAR-Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI), said in May, with some experts putting the damage at 75% of the corals around the eponymous archipelago.
According to the Indian National Center for Ocean Information Services, a marine heatwave event of moderate category with area of spreading 98.56% was observed on May 3 over the Lakshadweep coast.
But all is not lost
In the tropics, coral species are more resilient, and have the capacity of recovering. While dead corals dot the beaches, Ali said, “A dive beyond the lagoon now will show you those that have recovered.”
Corals tend to revive if temperatures come back to normal values, said Madhavan Nair Rajeevan, the former secretary in the ministry of earth sciences.
“For example, in El Nino years when oceans become warmer, coral reefs suffer a lot, but recover once El Nino warming disappears. But if the warming it going to continue as part of global warming, coral reefs cannot be restored,” Rajeevan explained.
The larger risk is the changing nature of the sea itself.
“The sea around the islands is becoming like the Bay of Bengal,” said Anwar Hussain, 49, who grew up catching fish and then trained as a diver, describing the sea as “unpredictable”.
“Wind speeds are higher. Even the currents are different,” he said, explaining that one fallout of this change is the drop in the population of bait fish in the lagoon.
“Because the water is warmer, even bait fish are moving to the deeper parts of the ocean,” he said.
That affects one of the islands main sources of revenue: fish
Lakshadweep’s fishermen are the only ones in the country using the pole-and-line fishing method to catch tuna, a technique favoured in the neighbouring island nation of Maldives. On a good day, fishermen can be seen lining the streets with their catch in baskets tied to their bicycles.
The annual fisheries production is about 12,000 tonnes, which is hardly 5% of the total potential of the region, according to the Lakshadweep Administration. About 80% of the total catch is Skip Jack tuna. Separately, around 60% of the total landing is converted to dried products and about 40% goes for local consumption.
The drop in numbers of bait fish – fishermen use live bait — may soon add to the population’s economic losses.
“Bait fish live in the corals. As the temperatures have risen in lagoons, where the water is shallow, most corals have died. Hence, the fish are only available in the open water,” said district fisheries officer Mohd Kasim.
“There was mass deterioration in the corals this time. And tuna is a migratory fish, so it moves to suitable atmosphere,” he explained.
Meanwhile, the ecology has also seen a mysterious disappearance, that of sea grass.
“About a decade ago, the sea grass suddenly vanished. No one knows the exact cause,” said Ali.
Several theories exist.
“In some spots, you can still see the shoots for the sea grass. One theory is that the turtles ate it all,” said Alvin Anto, senior researcher at Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute.
The turtle population on the islands has seen an increase since the government initiated the Sea Turtle Conservation Project in November 1999. But, scientists are yet to find a direct correlation between the turtles and the sea grass.
On land, the change is more subtle.
For decades, the islanders depended on well water for all their fresh water needs. In 2005, the government with Chennai-based National Institute of Ocean Technology established a a desalination plant in Kavaratti.
Currently, there are two other desalination plants in Agatti and Minicoy islands, that provide about 100,000 litres of potable water everyday use, while the work on six others is underway.
This water, however, is not fit for consumption over longer periods of times because of its low mineral content.
Amid all this, the islanders have hope in the next generation.
“The children will always come back. The people of Lakshadweep don’t find peace elsewhere,” said Ali, the diver, whose eight-year-old daughter has already found her playground in the sea.
“This generation thinks differently,” he said, and this is evident in people like Hidaya’s daughter, Amreen, who at 13 is already a certified diver, a feat unimaginable a few decades ago, and can speak five languages, apart from her mother tongue, Jeseri.
“The islanders are like the ocean, always changing and moving like the waves,” said Ubaidullah AS who moved to Kavaratti from Kochi after his marriage to Hidaya and now works with her.
Sings of change abound, big and small (although the absence of a multi-speciality hospital is a sore point among many islanders; patients have to be airlifted to the mainland for treatment for serious conditions).
UPI, for instance, is widely accepted on the island. There’s an under-5 football team (the Union government has pumped money into sports). But for Abdul Khader, the former president of the Kavaratti Gram Panchayat, the most evident change is in the proximity to mainland and connectivity
“In my childhood, it took nearly 30 days to reach Mangalapuram in Kerala in sail boats. The news of the country winning Independence reached the islanders about six months later,” Khader said, even as he turned on his smartphone to show photos of development projects around the small island.
