What is Mumbai made of? Bollywood, bright lights, chaat, expensive land, slums and crowds. CST Station, the Mount Mary Church, the broken mills of Parel. What most people living in and outside Mumbai are unaware of, is that Mumbai’s shore holds a vast, rich expanse of marine life, from Cone Snails to Red Egg Crabs to Hook-nosed sea snakes. Of Mumbai’s many identities, the one that often goes forgotten is it’s waters and the creatures that exist in them.
Marine Life of Mumbai (MLOM) is the brainchild of three marine enthusiasts—Siddharth Chakravarty, an academic researcher, Abhishek Jamalabad, a marine biologist, and Pradip Patade, a marine expert, earlier this year. “All three of us obviously had some connection, and immediately hit it off,” Chakravarty tells Homegrown. Patade had been documenting Mumbai’s biodiversity for a while, and was searching for a way to share his research with the public. Thus, MLOM’s Facebook page was created. “We want other people to contribute,” Chakravarty tells us. “We want this initiative to be accessible to everyone.”
Through their Facebook page, MLOM wishes to create a marine database complete with a timeline, scientific names, and exact location at which the marine creatures were found and photographed. The page targets anybody interested in life within Mumbai’s waters, and wishes to encourage more people to contribute to their database. One of the ways of fulfilling this aim was through walks along Mumbai’s shores. MLOM conducts walks every month, the most recent being on Haji Ali’s coastline on the 27th of May this year. They were delighted to be joined by almost 50 people fascinated by Mumbai’s marine life. Through their walks, MLOM hopes to urge people to have walks in their own coastlines, as well as to raise awareness about Mumbai’s marine life.
When asked about the primary motivation behind MLOM, Chakravarty points to nothing but a shared interest in the marine ecosystem amongst the three founders. “We wanted to create a public platform; an open repository for people to put up their photographs and any information they had on the creatures that make up the marine ecosystem of Mumbai.” Photographs are the primary tool of propagation MLOM uses - “good photos do a lot for people; we want to use these to get people to engage with issues related to the ocean,” Chakravarty tells us. “We share this city with a lot of marine life. We want to build better citizenry partnership with these issues, responsibly.”
According to Chakravarty, there are 3 ways through which people look at Mumbai’s ocean - through the lens of its seafood, through the Koli community that lives and works along Mumbai’s coast, and through trashed beaches and industrial waste. MLOM wants for the city to look beyond these lenses - “It’s time for the city to engage with Mumbai’s marine life,” Chakravarty says. And so far, MLOM has been incredibly successful in doing just this. People are contributing immensely to MLOM’s database as well, because of which they now have almost enough photographs and information to feed into their Facebook page for the next few months. Their walks have had an overwhelming positive response, and people’s interest towards what lives on Mumbai’s shores is rapidly increasing - “We never thought our walks would be such a success!” Chakravarty exclaims. Nevertheless, MLOM wishes for the aim of their walks to come through with more clarity, “We do not want people to regard our walks as merely a day’s outing where they can click good photos,” Chakravarty says. “We want this to be a longer engage with issues regarding our oceans.”
Chakravarty concludes by stating that MLOM’s Facebook page isn’t their’s alone; it is the public’s page. It is an open platform for anyone interested to contribute. Marine enthusiasts - here’s your platform, here’s your opportunity. Help MLOM spread word about the gorgeous creatures that find their home within Mumbai’s waters.
MLOM is constantly looking for skilled volunteers for their contributions. You can find more information about them on their Facebook page.
Feature Image Courtesy: Pradip Patade
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