Chilika Lake

On our east-coast dash home from Hampi to Kolkata, we decided to make a brief stop at one of the few places described in our guidebook that attracted our interest: Chilika lake. At 1100 sq km, it is Asia’s largest lagoon and home to great biodiversity, especially its migratory bird populations that, between the months of November and March, number over a million. Flamingoes, ospreys, painted storks, eagles, pelicans and kites fly from Siberia, Iran and the Himalayas and join the indigenous population of egrets, herons and gulls to subsist on the abundance of fish found in the brackish waters. The lagoon is also home to a peculiar looking and widely advertised endangered marine mammal: the Irrawaddy dolphin.

When bringing to mind a dolphin, the image that immediately springs up is of the bottlenose- that swift, playful fellow from Flipper. The Irrawaddy however is markedly different. It has no beak- only a blunt, rounded head; its movement is slow and deliberate, rising slowly to the surface where it rolls, whale-like, to take its breath, then diving deep, its tail fluke coming clean out of the water; and its mature adult size is around a third more than that of an average adult human. Unfortunately for the Irrawaddy, they are adapted to inhabit the resource-rich rivers and shallow coastal marine waters such as Chilika. This means that they come into contact with humans far more than species found in oceans and, in much the same way as the Indus, Ganges and Yangtze dolphins, are consequently on the front line of the battle being waged between man and the natural world. Their demise has been attributed to: water contaminants from industry- heavy metals, etc; agricultural chemicals and industrial fertilizers; fishing that uses drag- and gillnets (or explosives in Vietnam and Thailand where they are also found); collisions with propellers; capture for transfer to oceanariums; and poaching for their oil which is considered aphrodisiacal. They now, after our sustained assault on their population, number about 2,000 in the world. The lake is home to, from the last approximate estimates, a mere 50.

The morning after our arrival, accompanied by one of the hotel staff, we hired a small, paint-flaking blue boat with an outboard motor to venture out into the lake and see if we could find any. The boat was one of many moored to a large jetty. The majority of these crammed vessels, unlike our spacious minnow, were old fishing boats adapted to accommodate up to 40 tourists at a time. Even though it was still early morning, many of these boats were filled with excitable Indian school children and teachers, all of them inexplicably ululating like some warring tribe at the sight of our passing white faces.

We made our way steadily out into the open water- a measure that has evidently been encouraged or imposed upon the tourist boats and fishermen so as to avoid propeller collision- and squinted hard against the reflected sunlight to catch sight of a breaching back. Within a few focused minutes, Lucy squealed as if she’d been bitten and pointed (bloody typical) 180 degrees from where I’d been staring. If it hadn’t been for the passion of her response, I’d swear she was lying.

Ten or so minutes later, a finger pointed across the water to a descending dorsal fin and we altered our course to run alongside its path. Suddenly, two, then three more backs broke clear of the water and spouted their expulsive breaths. It looked as if we’d come across a pod of perhaps four or five. The motor was switched off and we sat in rapt silence as the slow, graceful rolling and watery sputters were repeated mere metres from where we sat. Though practically blind, the dolphins’ echolocation would have sensed the boats presence. The fact that they calmly passed us by without panicking made the sighting all the more meaningful; a touching mutual trust that made the decimation we’d wrought on their species all the more shaming.

Overall, during the course of the 90 minutes, we made at least twenty sightings (there must have been a number of repeat ones) and returned to the jetty, elated at the fact that we’d glimpsed a fragment of these unassuming creatures’ lives and heartened at the certainty of their continued existence. Our elation soon turned to perturbation as we chugged up to the jetty. Several of the big boats bobbed in our wake. We glanced along the line of cheering Indian passengers, some of them, in some instances, screaming and flailing uncontrollably, and wondered at their reasons for coming out here at all. Admittedly, many were school kids and the excursion would have offered the same sort of thrill as any school trip would. The intentions of the teachers may be admirable- perhaps to draw their students’ attention to their natural heritage and encourage its conservation. But this tourist traffic: round-tripping, day-in, day-out, propeller blades driving deep into the water, oil being dribbled from every motor, plastic drinks cartons floating colourfully by- is the ‘awareness’ it provides of any real benefit? Is it, in the long-term, actually benefiting this now critically endangered species? Or is it just one more way for the local human population to extort a few quid from another natural resource that will, in time, be driven ever closer to extinction?