Early on a heat February morning, a bunch of ten ladies, ranging in age from 50 to 60, sit on the sandy shores of Akkal Madam seaside on India’s Pamban Island, rigorously bandaging their fingers. Wearing colourful blouses and saris, they wind thick strips of fabric over every digit and safe the ends with string. It takes them over 20 minutes.

The bandages, they’ve discovered, are the easiest way to guard arms from sharp rocks on the seabed after they go underwater to dive for seaweed, which they promote to an area manufacturing unit.

“This is how we get ready,” says Bhagavathy. “We’ve tried gloves before, but they always slip away in the strong currents. And injuries are so common when your fingers are exposed.”

Bhagavathy is aware of what she’s speaking about. Now in her mid-60s, she has been gathering seaweed since she was 7.

(Like the opposite seaweed divers interviewed for this story, she prefers to be referred to by her first identify solely, as is the customized in these components).

To preserve the rocks from tearing at their toes, the ladies put on rubber slippers. They strap on goggles since they’ll be underwater with frequent dives every lasting as much as 2-3 minutes over a 5-6 hour day. They’re mastered the artwork of holding their breath throughout these dives.

“It’s not for the faint-hearted. That’s why you won’t see any men here,” Bhagavathy jokes. The different ladies snicker as they wade into the nice and cozy waters.

But fashionable occasions and fashionable issues have made it more durable to reach this old style occupation. A rising variety of marine heat waves are causing a dropoff in the types of seaweed they collect. What’s extra, the federal government now prohibits seaweed extraction in some areas to advertise ocean well being.

These ladies additionally face challenges on the homefront. Alcoholism among husbands and other male family members is a serious problem.

Nonetheless, an estimated 5,000 ladies from the area persist, decided to proceed diving for seaweed.

“It’s our main source of livelihood,” says Munniammal, who’s in her mid-50s. “Our grandmothers and great-grandmothers have accompanied their husbands on fishing expeditions to collect seaweed as far as we can remember. It’s a tradition as much as it is our livelihood.”

Pamban, the place the ladies collected seaweed that February morning, is a teardrop-shaped island recognized for its wealthy marine ecosystem. With over 4,000 species of crops and animals, it’s thought-about by UNESCO to be one of many world’s most bio-diverse hotspots.

The island is positioned between peninsular India and Sri Lanka, linked to the Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu through a rail and highway bridge that stretches over a mile and a half throughout the waters of the huge Indian Ocean. Eucalyptus, coconut and palm bushes abound, and wood fishing boats bob on turquoise waters so far as the attention can see.

There are not any fishing boats on this specific seaside, nevertheless; Akkal Madam is a abandoned strip of baked sands at 8 a.m. when the ladies arrive after a 3-mile auto taxi journey from their village of Chinnapalam. A wild wind whips via their hair, and the daylight is blinding.

The ladies who’ve gathered to gather seaweed within the shallow reefs tie white gunny sacks round their hips and plunge into the waters. They pluck at sprigs of springy seaweed, releasing them from the sharp rocks they develop on. They floor briefly and with one deft flick of the wrist throw the sprigs into the sacks tied to their waists. With hardly a backward look they plunge into the waters once more. From 8 a.m. till 3 p.m. they’re primarily underwater.

Most of them put on shirts or t-shirts over their saris so their moist garments don’t cling to them; the extra layer provides heat. The strips of sari cloth thrown over the left shoulder streams behind like brightly coloured flags because the divers slice via the waves. The water is cloudy due to frequent bouts of nitrogen and phosphorus, pollution that causes the growth of algae. The currents are sturdy, even on this good sunny day.

In synch with the moon and the ocean

Like anybody who depends upon the ocean for a residing, the seaweed divers are exquisitely tuned into their pure environment.

On the seaside on Pamban island, they set their very own rhythm, harvesting seaweed solely 12 days each month, their schedule ruled by the lunar cycle. They acquire every week after the brand new moon (roughly mid-month) and every week earlier than the total moon (towards the tip of the month). This is when the tides are weaker, the waters gentler and extra conducive for seaweed gathering. There’s a niche of 9 days between cycles to permit the seaweed to regenerate.

Other seaweed gatherers from Chinna Palam who’re youthful and extra ready, have a unique working model.

They don’t simply collect seaweed by the coast. As their foremothers did, the ladies acquire seaweed additional out at sea, off the coast of 21 uninhabited islets scattered like gems between Pamban and Sri Lanka. These islands now make up the Gulf of Mannar Marine National Park. The seaweed haul right here is richer, particularly across the coral reefs. They make double the earnings of those that collect seaweed by the coast. Since they need to pool their cash to rent boats for this expedition, they exit to sea solely six occasions a 12 months and depart the seaweed that grows round Pamban island for older ladies to reap.

Small teams set out round 5 a.m., sharing a motorboat.

Their workday begins a lot earlier than the first light, says Seeniammal, who’s spreading the seaweed she gathered to dry simply outdoors her house. That morning, she awoke at 3 a.m., made herself tea, ready a meal for her husband and her granddaughter who lives along with her and packed some rice for lunch on the boat.

By 5 a.m., she is accompanied by 4 different ladies on a motorboat, operated by a fisherman they know properly. They every chip in about $1 for the journey. It’s a half-hour journey to the closest island. Depending on the supply of seaweed, they might enterprise out to the opposite islands which can be additional away. Once they discover one of the best spot, they moor the boat and dive in. The ladies are in neck deep waters normally till 3 p.m., as a result of the sturdy currents would disrupt the work after that. Seeniammal gathered about 22 kilos of seaweed from that single journey, she says, virtually double what ladies acquire close to the coast of Pamban.

They normally make about $6 a day – in comparison with $3 to $4 for the ladies who keep on the island’s coast.

No matter the place the seaweed is collected, the method of promoting it’s the similar. Once the ladies return to their village, the seaweed is rigorously weighed by representatives of native factories. Much haggling happens.

Risks galore: poison fish, dizziness, human attackers, new legal guidelines

Holding on to this conventional method of incomes a residing poses many dangers.

Poisonous fish abound within the coral reefs close by.

“A few years ago, a poisonous fish sunk its thorns into me,” says Seeniammal. “It hides in the coral reefs, so we can’t ever spot it underwater. The pain is so excruciating, you’ll wish you were dead. I was rushed to the hospital and treated with an injection, but I was weak and disoriented for weeks afterward.”

The stonefish that’s suspected to have stung Seeniammal is a well known venomous reef fish with 13 venomous spikes. Other ladies chime in that they need to continuously be careful for toxic fish and stinging jellyfish.

There are different risks. The ladies dive in small teams to allow them to look out for one another. Three months in the past, a 50-year-old seaweed collector from a close-by village was raped and killed on an remoted seaside.

The ladies additionally report that they generally develop dizzy whereas diving. If there’s any sort of accident, the seaweed collectors who journey by boat to their harvest spots should all return so the injured individual could be handled. That means a lack of earnings, however, says Bakyam, age 40, it’s a part of an unstated pact: “We constantly watch out for each other.”

Then there are the legislative roadblocks. In 1986, the federal government established the Gulf of Mannar Marine National Park. Seaweed extraction within the protected waters of the reserve was declared unlawful, with a jail time period of three years for violators.

S. Mahendran, a Forest Range officer within the close by city of Mandapam who’s aware of the ladies seaweed divers, says there’s a motive these restrictions existed.

“The islands are very fragile, eco-sensitive zones,” he says. “There is a buffer area of six to seven meters around each island to protect the coral reefs there. And any footfall on the island itself could pose a risk to its vegetation, particularly its medicinal plants and wild grass.”

The ladies are allowed to gather seaweed in the event that they don’t breach that buffer zone, he says. But for the reason that seaweed grows so near the islands, that’s a skinny line and never at all times potential, the ladies say.

So that restriction doesn’t cease the ladies, says Pandiammal, who’s the top of the native village council. “We tell authorities that it’s our right to do so. We don’t know any other way to live.”

Rocky lives above water too

I interviewed almost 50 seaweed-gathering ladies. They had one overriding concern about their lives after they had been out of the water: the boys of their group. They’re primarily fishermen – and, the ladies say, lots of them are hooked on alcohol.

“Both men and women struggle to make a living. But the men tend to squander away hard-earned money on liquor,” Pandiammal says. “It’s made our lives above water as rocky as the seabed we face all the time.”

So fishing earnings earned by the boys is squandered — placing strain on the ladies to dive for extra seaweed to make up for a husband’s misplaced earnings.

“Alcohol addiction is a huge problem in these parts and one that authorities are constantly battling,” says the forest officer Mahendran. “I truly admire the courage of these women. They must bear the burden of all the expenses after their husbands, who earn a good living, have frittered away their money on drinks.”

Many ladies say that the habit grows worse from April 15 to June 15, in the course of the state’s 45-day ban on mechanized boats, utilized by fishermen, so breeding season is just not interrupted. Even the seaweed gatherers keep house in order to not disturb the marine life. The state authorities offers every household about $60 to compensate for the lack of the boys who fish. But a girl’s earnings is just not taken under consideration as a result of a female labor force is largely invisible in a patriarchal country like India and a cash strapped state government battling a deficit can’t seemingly afford extra, says Mahendran.

Changes for the more serious — and the higher

About 30 years in the past, a plan was hatched to assist the ladies.

In the Nineties, the Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute, part of India’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, had the concept that instructing the ladies to farm seaweed could be not solely much less harmful than gathering however extra profitable.

An settlement was cast with for-profit firms to domesticate a non-native species known as Kappaphycus alvarezii, present in related water within the Philippines.

Hundreds of rafts had been arrange near the coast of Pamban island, laden with seaweed.

However, data from underwater photography taken since 2000 and printed within the journal Current Science in 2008, revealed that the cultivated species has turn into invasive, smothering coral reefs within the protected reserve.

An intensive open survey is required to ascertain whether or not the species is certainly invasive, says Vaibhav A. Mantri, senior principal scientist at CSIR-Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute. “There are contrary views on this subject,” he says.

So whereas the jury is out on seaweed cultivation, the military of seaweed collectors have seen adjustments for the higher. India’s Recognition of Forest Rights Act of 2006, acknowledges the rights of indigenous communities to utilize pure sources, and seaweed divers are actually being issued ID playing cards by the state’s Fisheries Department. One of the targets of this act is to “undo the historical injustice that occurred” to indigenous communities and to “empower them to use resources in the manner that they were traditionally accustomed.”

100 ladies seaweed divers from Chinna Palam ought to obtain ID playing cards later this month – Indian paperwork is blamed for the delays. That will allow them to gather seaweed anyplace with out concern for the repercussions. All they would want to do to qualify is to show that they’re members of the group that’s been gathering seaweed for generations. It’s a truce of types between the indigenous individuals who have liked and lived on these islands for 4 generations — and a authorities’s efforts to safe the marine reserve, says Mahendran.

“For us, it’s validation that we don’t destroy the islands,” says Pandiammal. “We protect them. If it weren’t for these islands, how could we live?”

Reporting for this story was supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Kamala Thiagarajan is a contract journalist primarily based in Madurai, Southern India. She experiences on international well being, science and growth, and her work has been printed within the New York Times, The British Medical Journal, BBC, The Guardian and different shops. You can discover her on twitter @kamal_t

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