My first trip to Lakshadweep was in 1996. I went there as a young marine researcher, working with local youth to train them in basic reef monitoring techniques. We used little more than a mask and snorkel, and swam in the lagoon, but I was hooked. It was by far the most beautiful location I had ever visited—an island paradise in every measure,” remembers Rohan Arthur, senior scientist and founding trustee of the Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) in Karnataka. Arthur heads NCF’s Oceans and Coasts programme, an interdisciplinary group that works on understanding human-wildlife interactions in aquatic environments.

For Pune-based Rucha Karkarey, a tropical marine ecologist, Lakshadweep is second home. After a Masters degree in tropical marine biology from Australia’s James Cook University in 2010, Karkarey returned to India to conduct research in the Lakshadweep archipelago. This study, as part of the PhD with the NCF, spanned nine years. “Up until 2014, we found that the primary threat to the archipelago was from mass bleaching events that were occurring every six to 10 years as a result of climate change. These are basically giant heatwaves that take place across the ocean. In this phenomenon, the water temperature increases to a point that the coral reefs cannot withstand, and they therefore, bleach in stress. But things began to change after that year, as more stressors caused disturbance to the islands,” Karkarey adds.