The Life Aquatic

As ever-growing mounds of trash continue to find their way into the oceans and the mercury keeps rising, Nayantara Jain of ReefWatch India talks damage control and rehabilitation for India’s coral reefs.

- Nidhi Gupta

Over the 105 minutes that Nayantara Jain spent underwater in the Bay of Bengal one January morning, she had all the usual visitors: Crabs “the size of half a fingernail” burrowing into the sand, crocodile fish that are experts at camouflage, slow-moving sea turtles, burly barracudas, flamboyant parrotfish and flying fish. Amid this riot of colours, “I saw a giant shoal of fusiliers approaching,” she says. From where she stood on the seabed, it looked like “golden arrows falling from the sky.”

Being underwater, according to Jain, is much like going on a wildlife safari. Except, “on land, humans might be identified by the animals as predators, and thus something to be wary of. Marine animals have no frame of reference for what you are,” she laughs over the phone, that afternoon, after her dive. “So you’re going to encounter either a deep curiosity (don’t be surprised if you turn around to see an octopus poking at you) or complete obliviousness to your presence.”

Jain’s passion for all things seaborn is infectious. When she isn’t waxing eloquent in school classrooms or at TEDx talks about the wonders pooling in our oceans, she’s uploading mesmerising mermaid-like selfies and stunning portraits of fish somersaulting in teal waters on Instagram. As the executive director of ReefWatch India – an organisation with a focus on coral reef research and conservation in the Indian peninsula – the 31-year-old has been operating out of Chidiya Tapu, a tiny village on the southernmost tip of the southern Andaman Islands, for the past five years. “We have the ocean on three sides,” she says, almost as if to invite you to dive into one of the only six coral reef outposts in Indian territory. “As you approach from Port Blair – an hour’s drive – the last 6-7 kilometres are just beautiful mangroves and virgin rainforests.”