How Nicobar’s corals disappeared on government maps

The island of Great Nicobar has numerous gentle bays that open into the Andaman Sea. One of them is the Galathea Bay – its sandy shores are widely known as the nesting site of giant leatherback turtles, the largest turtle species in the world.

A lesser known fact about the bay is that until 2020, maps prepared by a government research institute showed that it harboured coral reefs.

Corals are a Schedule I species under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. This is the same status granted to tigers, Gangetic dolphins and elephants – all these species enjoy the highest level of protection from hunting, poaching and trade.

Apart from Galathea Bay, the 2020 map prepared by the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management in Chennai, which functions under the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, also showed coral reefs hugging several other shores of the Great Nicobar, particularly in the south and the west.

But an updated map prepared by the same institute in 2021 contains a dramatic change. In this map, corals are completely missing along the coast of the Great Nicobar, including in Galathea Bay. Instead, they are marked in the middle of the sea, away from the shores.

This can be seen in the maps below – the...

Read more