More at http://www.sanctuaryasia.com |Cover Story
FACING PAGE: This master of camoufl age is rarely seen in the intertidal
zone but is still very much there. At times all you would see is an arm
sticking out from under a rock but if you’re lucky, you could see one
out in the open, as seen here, or even see a protective mother clutching
her eggs. The proximity of creatures like this to Mumbai’s skyline makes
them especially vulnerable to anthropogenic threats.
You never forget a fi rst.
Two years ago, I walked on a Mumbai shore for something
other than exercise for the fi rst time.
The message on my phone said, “Haji Ali shore walk. 6.30
a.m.” Until then, the only thing that could nudge me out of
bed that early was a forest safari with the promise of stripes.
I casually reached the rocky patch of shore behind the Haji Ali
durgah an hour late, expecting to be underwhelmed. How could
this crowded, polluted coast possibly host wildlife? The three
founders of Marine Life of Mumbai – Pradip Patade, Abhishek
Jamalabad and Siddharth Chakravarty (see Sanctuary Vol.
XXXVIII No. 10, October 2018) – seemed to be unduly excited
about a few crabs.
But a closer look at the tiny tide pools that day – and almost
every low tide cycle since – turned everything I thought I knew
about my city’s shore on its head. Our idea of a marine space
is usually one fi lled with crashing waves and the swell of high
tide, not a vast rocky outcrop that even the water seemed to
abandon, receding far into the distance (just like the fl awed
notion that a forest equals dense trees, and seemingly ‘empty’
grasslands that host many animals).
But here, the durgah stood guard over a small colony of
rust-orange, hexagonal polyps of false pillow coral, resembling a
honeybee comb draped on a rock. A short distance away, a sea
fan (also a type of coral), sat partly submerged. People swarmed
on the road outside, and on the walkway to the durgah. Sky
scrapers rose impossibly close together around us. I looked down
towards the resolute tide pools, where two Schedule 1 species
thrived in the heart of the one of the busiest places in Mumbai.
Later, I needed no convincing when Abhishek Jamalabad
asked me to help structure intertidal-specifi c content for Marine
Life of Mumbai and build a team that could turn into an ever-
growing community in Mumbai. I planned to leave in three
months, but two years later, I am still here, learning a little more
about the shore life every day.
I know now, that a fi ddler crab uses its larger claw to
attract its mate, and is delightfully called Shio Maneki in Japan:
‘the one that beckons the tide’. An Arabian cowry is one of
the few intertidal mammas to stay with her babies until they
hatch. A fresh, juicy patch of hydroids means that there are
aeolid nudibranchs (sea slugs) around, while the innocuous-
looking Conus is capable of ruining my day with its venomous
harpoon. The unlikely sights in a city like Mumbai – sea
anemones, wandering jellyfi sh, sea stars, carpets of neon-
green zoanthids, brought me closer to the intertidal ecosystem
with their superior abilities and glorious beauty.
A COMMUNITY COMES TOGETHER
But just when a community of marine enthusiasts is growing
into an extraordinary movement set on the road to citizen-led
research, the shore is changing forever. The Coastal Road Project
is no longer an animated, illustrative map on our computer
screens, but a reality that has begun in the form of soil testing
structures, reclamation of coastlines and the razing of large