Our framework
Conservation fails when understanding, anticipation, action, and governance aren't connected in time. Each layer depends on the one before it.
Understand — Build long-term knowledge of reefs.
Anticipate — Identify and forecast risks before damage becomes irreversible.
Protect — Take urgent action to limit or prevent degradation.
Restore — Intervene to recover reef health.
Sustain — Build governance and local stewardship for long-term resilience.
What we won't compromise:
No data without purpose.
No restoration without evidence.
No extractive research.
Local benefit is mandatory.
Our Journey
Meet The Team
Prajakta Kuwalekar
Executive Director Divemaster
Leads strategy, partnerships, and the push to make blue economy a viable, earned-income mission in India, starting with the Andamans. Having worked across Technology, Media and Global Multilateral orgs, she understands how these sectors intersect and how to build leverage for scalable outcomes. Following the 2024 bleaching event, she transitioned into a diving career and moved to the Andaman Islands.
Akshit Garg
Chief Technology Officer
As an SSD Diver who participated in the first batch, Akshit has built technology tools to make Samudra's work accessible and scalable through the last one year. Infrastructure Engineer by profession, he likes to get his hands dirty with plankton.
Sarah Drego
Marine Sciences
Program Lead
Designs Samudra's research protocols and citizen-science methodology, from intertidal surveys to long-term reef monitoring. Having studied Zoology and Biochemistry at St. Xavier's College, Sarah moved to Port Blair to pursue her curiosity for the ocean and completed Master's in Marine Biology at Pondicherry University. Her thesis was on understanding the relationship between coral and its associates across intertidal areas in Andamans.
Mrigank Save
Curriculum Lead & Dive Instructor
Builds the SSD pathway's dive skills and safety vertical, from a diver's first dive to expedition-ready fieldwork. Mrigank has worked in outdoor education for 15+ years. He has led terrestrial as well as aquatic wildlife experiences. He has also extensively worked with Forest Departments of various states to mitigate human-animal conflict. With keen interest in wilderness medicine, he has also forrayed into technical diving and is currently working as a scuba diving instructor in Andamans.
Dr. Vitul Agarwal
Director of
Science
Brings scientific rigor to Samudra's data — guiding research direction and ensuring fieldwork holds up to peer scrutiny. He has completed his doctoral research at University of Rhode Island where his field of research was early warning system. He continued his work in biological oceanography at Scripps Institute of Oceanography and is now an assistant professor at Tohoku University in Japan.
Arham Gabula
UW documentation Lead
Arham also came to the Andamans to participate in the SSD program. He has since become a divemaster and now an Assistant Scuba Instructor. With keen eye for marine life, he knows hideouts of octopuses, can figure out how to find nudibranchs and is a favourite with the Dugong. Marine life documentation is his forte and he also tutors SSD students.
Shyam Sethuraman
Underwater Operations
Runs the logistics that get divers, equipment, and surveys safely into the water. He has become a dive professional to work in marine conservation. With that goal, he worked at Project Laut in Indonesia before moving back to India to apply his skills here. He has worked on a 3D mapping protocol and mapped 10 sq kms of reefs for a long term monitoring protocol.
Jervis George
Film and Media
Shapes how Samudra looks, sounds, and tells its story - on the water and off it. He is supporting us with immersive ways to document marine life and livelihoods of people in the Andamans. Jervis is from the islands and after having completed a masters in Filmmaking, he worked as a producer in mainland before returning back to islands. He has one goal, it is to make every story in the Andamans count. And tells it from the bottom of his heart.
Board of Advisors
Umeed Mistry
UW Documentation Expert
We wouldn't be here without Umeed. The first action we took was to record the bleaching event in 2024 and Umeed assembled the team and the equipment on short notice to record the bleaching. He is our chief dots connector and has been instrumental in Samudra's curriculum framework. His organisation, EarthCollab has provided knowledge to various endeavours Samudra has embarked upon.
Venkatesh Charloo
Founder, Coastal Impact
Venkatesh is the muscle behind the first ever Scientific Diving program we organised. He has brought his wealth of experience in dealing with conservation volunteers to the SSD curriculum pathway. It was his insights about standardisation of citizen science training that brought us to the tiered journey that the scientific diving program has evolved into.
Pradip Patade
Marine Life of Mumbai
Our intertidal walks started with Pradip sir's persistent knowledge sharing with the Marine life of Mumbai platform. His encouragement started the Marine Life of Andamans chapter and we continue to learn from his tenacity, focus and most importantly his passion to take people to the shores.
Read about his work in our BLOG
Pooja Sampath
Filmmaker
Pooja can usually be found in a coastal town or an island quietly going about her day while soaking in nature and the stories that live with it. She is fierce about her relationship with the ocean and every time Samudra organises a sprint, she shows up with her gear and her camera just to make sure the message goes far and wide. She was instrumental in recording the 2024 bleaching event and has since worked on other documentary projects such as 'Kadal Makkal', Children of the Sea in Pondicherry.
Science Mentors
Jeremy Josh
Marine Biologist, Coastal Impact
Jeremy has been instrumental in Samudra's foundation. As a scientific diver who was working on projects at University of Tasmania, he has built extensive understanding of how to make scientific diving accessible to recreational divers. Our first training program was in partnership with Coastal Impact and Jeremy was key to turning our SSD curriculum into a fun field program in Andamans.
Wenzel Pinto
Researcher - Nature Conservation Foundation
Wenzel was the mentor for the data collection work we did for the pan India survey in 2025. Since then, he has encouraged us to go from citizen science to long term monitoring. He continues to mentor us and guide us to refine our research protocol and conservation tools.
Muktai Kuwalekar
University of Helsinki
Muktai guides us with dealing with datasets of biological data. As a Bioinformatician by profession, she is currently pursuing her Doctoral Research at Helsinki Institute of Life Science HiLIFE. Her research is on Cichlids. She has an interest in studying the tropical marine organisms to discover facets of evolutionary biology.