Can Nicobar Islands' Corals Survive Translocation? Coral Biologist Raises Doubts

At a time when corals around the world are facing unprecedented threats from climate change, India’s plans to translocate big coral colonies in the Nicobar Islands for a mega development project has come under severe criticism. A comprehensive plan to translocate 16,150 coral colonies—as suggested by the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI)—enabled the Rs 92,000-crore project to get a go-ahead from the National Green Tribunal (NGT). The tribunal deemed that the plan by the ZSI had sufficient safeguards to give the mega port and township project a green light. However, Dr Bryan Wilson, a renowned coral biologist and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, disagrees. In an exclusive interview with The Quint, Dr Wilson said the plan to translocate corals in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands—and the assumption that the environment will be exactly the same—is nothing short of "scientific madness". Dr Wilson further questioned whether any independent scientific authority had, in fact, verified the claim made by the ZSI in the tribunal that their previous translocations had resulted in a greater than 90 percent survival rate. "The big issue that I think as a scientist, as a researcher, that I'm really concerned about is that there has been no independent fact-checking of what the ZSI says. It truly baffles me," he said. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices