Long time no sea: Tamil Nadu is rescuing its drowning islands

More than a decade ago, a small uninhabited island in the Gulf of Mannar named Vaan split in two.

- Gowri S

In months, its northern half had vanished under the sea.What was left a green patch of land just off the coast of Tamil Nadu was slowly being swallowed up too. By 2015, it had lost 84% of its land area.

Decades of coral mining and coastal erosion from rising sea levels amid the climate crisis were destroying what had once been a biodiversity hotspot, home to endangered dugongs, molluscs, dolphins, whales, sea turtles and numerous species of fish, as well as coral reefs, seagrass beds and mangroves.

In 2016, a team of marine researchers joined hands with the government of Tamil Nadu and set themselves a mission: to keep what was left of the island above water.

Today, the erosion of Vaan has been successfully halted, using artificial reef structures (more on that in a bit). Its land area has gone from 20 hectares in 1969 to eight hectares in 2009, 1.53 hectares by 2015 and 3.79 hectares today, with plans to slowly expand it further.

What's more, it's told the government of Tamil Nadu that saving an island is possible.

This matters, because Vaan is one of 23 such formations that dot the Gulf of Mannar, the shallow bay in the Indian Ocean that stretches between India and Sri Lanka.