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Meet Vidhi Bubna, Founder of Coral Warriors, India’s first scuba diving project.

 

 

We met Scuba Diver and City, University of London student Vidhi recently. We were impressed and inspired to learn about the work she is doing to prevent further damage to India’s coastline. She says, “Corals are to marine ecosystems what plants are to land.” As a scuba diver, she has first-hand experience of observing the impact of climate change on marine life. She told LIDC that it takes just three weeks to see corals losing their  beautiful vibrant colour and turn completely white: a tragic phenomenon that she has observed in sites including Andaman, Egypt and the Maldives and have come to learn how human activity impacted life underwater.

The coral bleaching that Vidhi (pictured here) and her fellow Indian scuba-divers have witnessed  inspired her to form Coral Warriors, India’s first scuba diving project.  She has been raising awareness at home and abroad, including given interviews to the press. You can read her interview with India’s Telegraph newspaper here.  As she explained to LIDC:

“Our goal is to raise awareness of climate change and how activities like diving impact on the health of coral. We host workshops educating children and adults about the dangers human activity (climate change, overfishing etc) pose to marine life from overfishing and climate change and how we can change. We estimate that we have reached 56000 people across 21 states in India using workshops. [1] We are keen to support those from marginalized groups and are also working to counter the gender imbalance that exists in sports such as scuba diving.”

Crucially, Vidhi points to the mantra of ‘acting locally and thinking globally.’ To this end, they Coral Warriors helped launch the Brazilian Guitarfish Movement. They work with fishermen in Brazil to oppose illegal trading of the endangered guitarfish.

Coral Warriors recently featured in a documentary made by Eco-India. The documentary reported on the work that eco-activists are doing in and around Mumbai’s coastline to protect and preserve precious marine life. We encourage you to watch the 12-minute reportage here (Vidhi is at 5 mins 45).

Find out more about Coral Warriors and how you can support their work here.