Marine Life of Andamans Seasonal Community Report (September 2025 – September 2026)
MARINE LIFE OF ANDAMANS NEWSLETTER
SEASONAL COMMUNITY REPORT (SEPTEMBER 2025 - SEPTEMBER 2026) |
WHAT IS MARINE LIFE OF ANDAMANS? (MLOA) | Marine Life of Andamans (MLOA) is a community science initiative documenting the marine biodiversity of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. We bring together islanders, divers, dive schools, naturalists, scientists and ocean enthusiasts to build something the region has long lacked: a baseline of what lives in these waters. |  |
WHO WE ARE: A collective of everyday ocean-goers - the people already in the water every day turned into a distributed monitoring network. Every dive, every snorkel, every beach walk is a chance to add a data point! | WHY IT'S NEEDED: Despite holding some of India's richest marine ecosystems, the Andamans have sparse, fragmented biodiversity data, leaving India's scientific and archival institutions, conservation planners and researchers to work with incomplete information. MLOA exists to close that gap, one observation at a time. Anyone can upload a sighting to iNaturalist and get help identifying it, adding to a dataset that key stakeholders across India can use for policy, business and climate mitigation decisions. |
As we gear up and dive into a new season, let's take a moment to reflect on the season behind us - on everything the ocean showed our community, and everything you all helped bring to light.
GEOGRAPHIC SPREAD: WHERE WE EXPLORED
Don’t forget to upload all your findings on iNaturalist MLOA
TAXONOMIC BREAKDOWN
Monthly observations:
If the ocean had a heartbeat, this is what it would look like!
Observations start off sleepy in September 2025, when monsoon seas are choppy and few of us are in the water. They pick up through October and November. As the swell settles by January, the community hits its stride and February 2026 crosses 400 observations, right at the sweet spot of calm seas and peak diving season.
Fish and invertebrates carry the bulk of the story every month, a fair reflection of their diversity and abundance on Andaman reefs and ease in photographing. Corals, sharks, rays and reptiles show up in smaller but steady numbers, groups we'd love to see much more of on next season's chart.
Invertebrate observations:
FROM THE FIELD “Intertidalling at Bharatpur and Laxmanpur taught me to slow down and notice the invertebrate life hidden in plain sight. Returning to Bharatpur at different times - for intertidalling, snorkelling beneath the jetty and finally conducting a survey, revealed an astonishing amount of variation within the same place. Each visit showed me something I had missed before. The experience changed how I observe a shore, and now, wherever I go, I instinctively look closer.” -Shivani Madgulla, SSD L2 Conservation Diver Participant  |  |
Molluscs are the undisputed stars of this season's invertebrate lineup, with over 660 sightings across 169 species, from cowries and clams to the ever-photogenic nudibranch. They are as easy to photograph as they are fascinating. Arthropods and echinoderms round out the podium in second and third place.
One number worth pausing on: cnidarians, the group that includes all our corals, logged only 23 observations, though corals are basically the wallpaper of every Andaman reef. That isn't because there are no corals to find. Corals are notoriously hard to identify from a photo.
In a region this rich in coral diversity, that is a large data gap, and we still know very little about the reefs that sustain us. There is much more research to be done, more photographs to take and more contributions to make, and it all begins with you and us at Marine Life of Andamans.
TOP OBSERVATION OF THE SEASON: Highest observations - Giant Boring Clam (Tridacna crocea)
This season's top observation is the Giant Boring Clam (Tridacna crocea). While its cousins can grow to the size of a bathtub, T. crocea tops out at around 15 cm. It spends its life boring into coral rock or reef substrate until only its jewel-toned mantle peeks out, a flash of turquoise, gold or violet set into the reef like a beautiful alien being.
Like all giant clams, it farms its own food. Its mantle hosts symbiotic algae (zooxanthellae), the same photosynthetic partners corals rely on, making it as much a solar panel as a mollusc and a living indicator of reef health. A coral reef biodiversity survey across Andaman sites recorded T. crocea alongside three other giant clam species (T. maxima, T. gigas and T. squamosa), noting it as particularly abundant around Havelock and Neil Island. This season's high count is an accurate field echo of what earlier surveys found here.
Across the Indo-Pacific, giant clams have historically been harvested for their meat, a subsistence food in many coastal communities, and for their shells, prized in the curio and jewellery trade. Illegal marine shell trade has been documented in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which record the highest number of legally protected mollusc species in India's illegal wildlife trade seizures.
For a reef-boring species like T. crocea, the bigger long-term threat is habitat rather than harvesting: as coral cover comes under pressure from bleaching and degradation, the very reef it bores into and depends on is at stake.
SEASON HIGHLIGHTS:
Beyond the numbers, every season throws up moments that remind us why this work matters: a species nobody expected to see, a sighting that made even the experts pause, a first-time observer's lucky find. This season, it was something we'd never witnessed before.
Divers documented rare mating behaviour in dugongs (Dugong dugon), the state animal of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and one of the least understood species in our waters. These elusive, seagrass-grazing marine mammals are a crowd favourite and among the most endangered species in Indian waters. The Andamans remain one of the country's last known strongholds for dugongs, which makes behavioural footage like this exceptionally rare.
SHOUTOUT TO NEIL & HAVELOCK DIVESHOPS
To every diver who paused mid-dive for a photo, every naturalist who patiently helped with an ID, and every walker who turned over one more rock: this initial baseline exists because of you, one observation at a time.
It only gets more powerful from here. The longer we keep this up, the more these numbers stop being a snapshot and start telling a story - of seasonal patterns, shifting populations, and an ecosystem we understand a little better with every observation.
WHAT’S NEXT?Dugong Monitoring Plan For the upcoming season, we're turning our attention to Neil Island's most elusive but beloved residents, the dugongs. Its reefs and seagrass meadows are prime dugong territory, but like corals, there is still very little we know about them. Every dugong sighting can become a crucial data point in understanding how they live and how best to protect them. This is where the community comes in, and that means you too! We're setting up a community reporting network with local dive centres and fishers, building a photo-ID catalogue, and mapping where dugongs actually spend their time relative to the seagrass and reefs around the island. Community Intertidal Walks Every full moon, as the tide draws back and the intertidal comes to life, we hold community intertidal walks across the islands. They're open to all: naturalists, divers, tourists and ocean lovers alike. Join our WhatsApp Community for regular updates. |
Visiting the Andamans? Trade an hour of your holiday for a different kind of walk. Our guided intertidal walks take you onto the reef flats at low tide, where a hidden world of sea stars, urchins, crabs and camouflaged critters reveals itself right at your feet.
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