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beautiful yet brutal. A place untouched
by the human hand, close to how
the world was before anthropogenic
pressures tarred landscapes with broad
and blunt brushes. Macfarlane goes
deeper, going into the etymology of
the word wild – he avers wildness is
wilfulness. A process of being
self-willed; and thus, signifi cantly, not
willed by humans. The sea gives you
that feeling – of wilderness, wilfulness,
of possessing a beyond-human
consciousness that may just spit you
out like an irritant, or leave you
awe-struck with marine wonders.
On the west coast of India, the sea
is cornfl ower blue in parts, and marbled
green in others. The blues and greens
of the water blur against the blues
and greys of the sky. You see miles
and miles of grey-green-blue before
anything else. It takes hours of sailing
to see a single pelagic bird. It may
take days of sailing to see a birdyou want to tick off your list. That
morning, the sun was beating down at
us and we hadn’t seen a single marine
bird. Some people were heaving their
insides off the sides of the boat,
hopelessly seasick.
And then, we spotted something.
A white patch. Could it be a bird wing
or rump?
Through the blinding sunlight, we
squinted into our binoculars. The white
turned out to be a piece of glistening,
bone-white styrofoam. That white –
when not on bird or beast – seemed
ridiculously out of place. On that piece
of trash, a skua was riding. A skua, my
very fi rst! A pirate who steals food
from other birds, an Arctic Skua, afl oat
on its very own boat. But seeing the
bird surf nonchalantly atop a piece of
permanent trash made my excitement
melt away, a technicolour movie fading
to static. We saw numerous other
individual birds, including SandwichFACING PAGE Marine debris near the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, which are also part of the
Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuge. Discarded waste such as soda cans, cigarette butts,
plastic bags and straws are detrimental to the health of marine life and ecosystems.
BELOW The author came across this Arctic Skua riding a piece of styrofoam on a pelagic
birdwatching trip along the coast of Mangalore.NEHA SINHAWriter, conservation advocate and passionate wildlife lover, Neha Sinha has been
using her impressive knowledge and penmanship to highlight threatened species and
ecosystems. Winner of a Sanctuary Wildlife Service Award in 2017, she writes here
about the important, but mostly ignored, problem of how human trash is impacting
marine ecology.
Do you dream of getting into
a little coracle, waves rocking the boat
gently, depositing you in a fl uid ebb from
a bay to the ocean’s azure expanse? Do
you dream of getting into the sea in the
sleekest of ships, peering out from the
luxury of panelled cabins and hammocks?
Whichever way you look at it, nothing can
prepare you for the sea itself. Whether
in coracle or a cruise liner, the sea is an
interminable vastness, which hammers you
into a smidgeon of insignifi cance.
It was early morning and I was
preparing to go for a pelagic birdwatching
trip off the coast of Mangalore. The word
pelagic dripped down the side of my mind,
pooling in its signifi cance. ‘Pelagic’ seemed
so much more fl eshed out than ‘coastal’
or even ‘marine’. One can fi nd marine life
- birds, sea slugs, corals – near beaches.
But pelagic refers to purposely, actually,
going out unto the sea; exposing oneself
to harsh skies and winds, becoming yet
another speck on the huge back of the
heaving ocean. That pelagic morning, I was
on the still-dark coast at 5.30 a.m. In the
slaty sky, orange and white Brahminy Kites
circled purposefully. Cattle egrets sat on
poles, stumps and boats, looking like lights
that had been put out.
To get to our boat – a stolid midsize
aff air nowhere close to a ‘ship’ – we had
to climb over other docked boats. The
group – comprising amateur as well as
experienced nature-lovers were prepared
for the journey with motion sickness
medicines, biscuits and bananas, and good
cheer. Of course, nothing really prepared
us for what was to follow. For isn’t the sea
the fi nal frontier of earthly comprehension
and wilderness?
THE BLUE WILDERNESS
Author Robert Macfarlane writes
beautifully about the idea of
‘wilderness’. Many consider wilderness
to be succour, as well as a challenge –