This woman is on a cleaning mission

Thiruvananthapuram: As residents of Valiyathura celebrated Palm Sunday, 25-year old Aneesha Ani Benadict was busy preparing for her underwater mission nearby Vizhinjam harbor. The mission ahead was to clear abandoned fishing nets (ghost nets) deposited at the sea beds near Vizhinjam harbor.
Aneesha, who works as a data analyst at Kerala state biodiversity board, is also the research coordinator at Friends of Marine Life (FML). Even though she has to work six days a week, Aneesha makes sure that her holidays are spent at sea, which has become a mess filled with unknown number of ghost nets and debris post cyclone Ockhi. On Sunday, Aneesha along with FML founding director Robert Panipilla cleared off around 3kg ghost nets from Vizhinjam. At a time when United Nations announced the theme of 2019 Ocean Conference as ‘Ocean and Gender’, contributions made by Aneesha becomes all the more important.

Aneesha is relatively new to both swimming and deep sea diving. “ I didn’t know how to swim so when I took a break after graduation I learnt swimming with the help of Manikandan, a fisherman from Kovalam,” she said.

Soon, Aneesha joined FML as a volunteer. With help from traditional fishermen, FML spots ghost nets during fishing, study the spot and after analysis deploy volunteers to dive and recover the ghost nets. “Coral reefs are one of the most sensitive marine lives that are affected by the ghost nets,” said Aneesha, who recently received a scuba diver license.

According to Panipilla, “As someone who came from the fishermen community, she faced many obstacles to reach where she is now. When she had to learn swimming, she did not resort to going to a pool. Rather she wished to learn it at the sea itself. Aneesha is the perfect example of how education can be used for the common good of a society”.