Swimming for your supper
more images of ancient relics captured by Pantaleão Fernandes
Tragedy propelled environmental engineer Sanober Durrani into action in 2018. She’d returned from a holiday to her home in North Goa to find that a large banyan tree in her village had been, as she puts it, “hacked to death” for no discernible reason. By January 2019, she started the Goa Banyan Project to rope in the local community and propel a conservation movement so that no other banyan tree across the state would meet the same fate.
Goa Banyan Project makes note of each banyan with its location and date of documentation, along with markers signifying its current status. A black marker stands for cut or felled; red is for those in danger of being cut or felled (such as those near power lines, road easements or land marked for property development); blue is for indiscernible status; and green for those banyans that seem safe from immediate or future threat.
So far, the project has tagged over 300 trees and kept five from being cut or felled by employing intervention, dialogue and community action at the right time.
“I see a banyan as a physical cultural resource, an ancient legacy that is easily identifiable to the current generation,” says Durrani. Banyans are referenced in Indian mythology as a revered resting place for the gods. They also host a complex microhabitat under their comfortingly large canopy. Durrani says roping in individuals in a community to locate, record and tag banyans helps foster engagement. This helps raise awareness, social capital and cooperation for conservation. The project has shown that if or when a recorded tree is under threat of being cut or felled, individuals will raise an alarm and inform others in the community who can potentially help.
In August 2020, the project helped a fallen banyan in Arambol back on its feet, with the help of locals, and a translocator from Hyderabad. The project, Durrani says, is documenting the state’s legacy trees. “Such local efforts may be considered contemporary movements that set the tone for the future.”
Along Goa’s 100-km long coastline, beyond its shack-studded beaches, lie 145 species of seaweeds — and most of them are edible. Marine conservationist and Goa native, Gabriella D’cruz, 30, believes these slithery plants in low tide pools are a superfood. They can even help struggling coastal communities find a new source of income.
Traditionally, India’s seaweed was largely collected to make agar, a gelatin substitute, or for fertiliser. D’cruz says its umami flavour makes it a good ingredient for Asian dishes and also a nutritious fish replacement in vegan and gourmet foods. Seaweed is also highly valued in the global beauty industry because it is high in antioxidants, amino acids and vitamin C.
“In India, seaweed salts have a big potential because of their nutrition value and our love for seasoning,” says D’cruz.
D’cruz researched Goa’s native seaweed species for more than five years before setting up The
Good Ocean in 2020.
Her business supplies seaweed to restaurants such as chef Pablo
Miranda’s Makutsu, and to beauty and pharmaceutical companies, where it is used in skin treatments.
In December, along with a
Goa-based conservation consultancy EcoNiche, she also set up two seaweed farms, essentially a coland lection of large bamboo coir rafts in the seas, in Goa and in Kumta, Karnataka. More seaweed isn’t just good for the economy; it’s good for the Earth too. “They are like powerhouses of the sea because they absorb carbon and support other marine creatures such as turtles and nudibranchs,” says D’cruz.
Her efforts won her the BBC Global Youth Champion award in 2021. It’s a win for Goa too. D’cruz spent most of her childhood playing among trees, collecting wild berries on hills and chasing fish in freshwater streams.
“I’ve grown up in a community that cares about nature and is open to experimentation,” she says. “Goa has always been a testing bed for innovation; people are warm, accepting of new ideas.”
She hopes that the coastal community will look at seaweed as a viable form of revenue, sparking the need for more climate-smart, regenerative farming initiatives.