The night came in early and soon we were sailing in almost total darkness, but under the canopy of a million stars–the milky way above us. We had started early that morning on a small, private, sail boat and still were not in sight of our destination. As I settled down on the deck for the night, I could not help but think about Charles Darwin and his Voyage of the Beagle. Close to 200 years ago, Darwin with his crew went around the world in HMS Beagle and in his trip to the Galapagos islands, he was baffled by the diversity of species on each of the islands and sparked the theory of evolution in his head.

I realised I was going to an island like that. The nearest landmass to the Narcondam island is the main Andaman island which is some 114 km to the west. To the east is Myanmar. On an evolutionary time scale, these islands have been isolated for so long that no mammals have managed to reach these islands on their own. Of the birds that could fly, some have made it to the island and made their home here. But once landed, the birds have been quite content with the island and have stayed isolated from the rest of the world for thousands and millions of years. In this time, the species on the island have evolved into species slightly different from those on the mainland. This is where the theory of evolution kicks in. Over time, species adapt and change to local conditions and in millions of years, become a different species. The process of natural colonisation is probably still on.

One of our primary aim was to see the Narcondam Hornbill. This hornbill, which looks very similar to the Wreathed Hornbill, found in northeast India and southeast Asia, is found only on this island and no where else in the world. Many millions of years ago, either this island was connected to the mainland Asia via a land bridge or was close enough for these hornbills, being powerful fliers, to reach this island. But after that, they have remained isolated for so long that they have changed over time. Today they are much smaller than the Wreathed Hornbills and are visibly a distinct species.

But wait a second. If a big bird like the hornbill could have evolved differently on this isolated island, what about all other creatures like reptiles, amphibians, and plants. We had the right people on board to help find just that and I could barely sleep with the excitement that I would wake up to the sight of this island.

I woke up the next morning and realised that the winds had been against us and we were still many hours from reaching the island. Sometime around 10:00 h, we saw an inverted V on the horizon. The distinct shape of a volcanic island. An extinct volcano in fact. It took us 3 more hours to actually get close to the island.

The Narcondam island from a distance

As we approached the island from the south, we knew from reading the reports of previous expeditions that there were only two small stretches of beach to land. Rest was too steep and even if we could anchor, it would be very tough for us to get onto the island and go inside the forests. After we were close enough, we sailed towards to northeast corner of the island to find the landing spot.

Narcondam Island

We saw a Indian flag on the shore and some people came there to wave at us. Since this island is out in the ocean, the Indian Government setup a police outpost a few decades ago and a few people stay here on rotation, changed and supplied every month by the Coast Guard of the Indian Navy. This is how India stakes her claim on the island.

After dropping the anchor, we took a small inflatable boat “gemini” and went over to the island. We landed and realised there were 20 people stationed there to protect the island.

View of our boat “Emerald Blue” from the island

The island’s geography itself was quite fascinating. The island is a volcanic island. The volcano is now extinct. So the whole island is very loose, with rocks and ashy soil. When climbing up, one can never trust the ground for support as it just crumbles under your weight and the loose, rolling rocks will hit the person behind you. We were instructed to climb only by holding on to trees and other plants.

Volcanic rock on the coast

Over the next four days, we explored the island from dawn till dusk and at the end of the day got back to the boat to sleep. Though we were doing a lot of things as a team, each one was after something specific. T R Shankar Raman and Divya Mudappa were trying to assess the population of the hornbills, the state of forest regeneration, and were keeping a record of other mammals on the island. Rom Whitaker and Janaki Lenin were out looking for reptiles and amphibians on the island. Ajay Saxena from the forest department was exploring the island to understand the management issues of this unique island. Tasneem Khan and Umeed Mistry were diving around the island, looking for interesting corals and marine creatures. I was trying to photograph as much diversity of the island as possible.

The island now has a lot of rats that have probably colonised the place along with humans or brought in by the ships accidentally. We were also on the look out for goats which had been introduced earlier as a source of protein for the camp, but had run feral. The forest department following a very strong recommendation by Dr. Ravi Sankaran had removed a whole load of them. We were of the view that a few had escaped capture. We were worried about the impact they might be having on the plant regeneration but were happy not to find any evidence of goats. However, we do know that at least a few are still around as they have been seen by the police guards.

The highlight birds were the Narcondam Hornbills and the Pied Imperial Pigeons. It was the nesting time for the hornbills, so we found them both at nests as well as feeding at large fig trees.

Narcondam Hornbill (Aceros narcondami)

One of the fascinating things that happened was the encounter with ground birds. On one of the days, I was quite pooped climbing up with all my gear and decided to rest by a stream. I was almost having a power nap when I felt something poking my feet. I got up and realised it was a bird very similar to the Slaty-legged Crake which took fancy for a Velcro hanging loose from my sandals. It was surprised to see me but not scared and stood less than 2 feet from me. I was shocked. Normally these kind of birds are shy like hell and one has to try really hard to sneak up on them and here was one right in front of me. It didn’t mind me at all and kept walking around foraging. I tried to shoot, but the light was low and most of the time it was in the minimum focussing distance of my lens. I walked with it for a good half hour and meanwhile rest of the guys joined me and had a look. It didn’t look like any of the crake species that we find in India. So either its a new species to science or some other crake which is found in southeast Asia. It very closely matched the Slaty-legged Crake.

On another day, we came across a Chinese Pond Heron which would not fly away too. It stood right next to us, and let us shoot it with our 12 mm lenses. Whats with these birds you might ask ? One possible explanation could be that the island does not have or ever had any mammalian predators. So these birds grew up generations after generations without fearing anything and over time lost fear of large things moving around with two or four legs. This is a classic island ecosystem behavior. In fact, in some places like New Zealand, many birds have given up flight totally as they didn’t see a reason to fly. Instead of eating a little and take flight, they would sit down for a big meal and take a stroll afterwards. This theory does not hold fully as there are water monitor lizards on the island and they could and would prey on these birds.

We also found atleast two species of bats on the island. Since it was peak summer, we were not so fortunate with snakes and frogs. We however saw many different types of skinks and geckoes. Rom believes many of them could be new species again.

Bent-toed Gecko : Found in Narcondam (but this photograph is from ANET, Wandoor)

Every evening, we would jump into the water with our snorkels as the heat and humidity was too much to take. There were amazing corals around the island and according to our marine experts, the island had some of the best corals in Andaman islands.

Overall, it was a trip of a lifetime for me. Not only did I get to see the island of my dreams, but also was there with the right company and the whole process of sailing there was just perfect. I can safely say that this is one of the few island, not just in India, but in the world which is still intact to a large extent and I hope things will only change for the better on this island, if at all.

Well it turns out, this hornbill is endemic to this small little 6.8 sq km extinct volcanic island named Narcondam island between Andaman islands and Burma. Can you imagine? The whole species of a big bird like the hornbill (some people even call it a honorary mammal) is found in this tiny little island. Since then, the goal was set. Visiting this island and exploring this went into my bucket list. It took more than 5 years for that dream to come true.

It took more than a year of planning, applying for permits and constituting the team for this trip. Finally it was a small team of scientists, photographers and forest dept official. The plan was to spend few days on the island and assess the situation of the island, the endangered hornbills and also look at some of the other wildlife that this island holds along with all the coral and marine stuff around the island.

So here is the first of series of posts about this expedition.

Day 1 (12th April 2010)

All of us reached Port blair two days before to pack, plan and setup things for the expedition. We chartered a sail boat/yacht from thailand to go on this expedition. We left port blair very early and set sail. Since the winds were not favorable, we could not use the sail and had to use the engine which meant we could only do a speed of 6 knots. After few hours, we were out in the open ocean with endless horizons on all sides. Past lunch, we suddenly saw this pod of spinner dolphins playing in the ocean. We slowed down and the the whole pod came towards to boat to play with us.

See this video to know why they are called spinner dolphins and its quite clear that they were just having fun. I shot this footage with a Nikon D90.

A pod of spinner dolphins swimming with the boat

Bow-sailing: A very favorite activity of dolphins (thats my foot in the frame)

One of the dolphin breathing with its blow-hole

Only these two remained in front of us after a while

And the last one that left us and went away

We also came across a pod of Pilot whales. No great photographs as we saw them only late in the evening just after sunset. We reached the island only the next day afternoon. More about the island in the next post.

Update : Since many of you asked, here is the wallpaper version of the last image

The truth however is quite contrary.

There is very little of original, undisturbed, pristine rainforests left. The Andamans were the timber source for mainland India for many decades. In fact till recently, the largest saw-mill in Asia was operated out of there. People in mainland India were given incentives like 10 tons of wood every year to settle down in the Andamans and ‘colonize’ the islands. Burmese people even today come into the islands, cut down the tallest trees, tie them all together and toe them back to Myanmar.

The People

Great Andamanese hunters, in an 1875 photograph (source commons)

The real tragedy has been with the local tribes. There were 6 different tribes in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. While a few of them (Jarawa, Sentinelese, Onge, Great Andamanese) are of Negroid origin, the others are Mongoloid (Shompen, Nicobarese) and have been living there for thousands of years and possibly represent a very critical link in human migration. The Andamans are theorized to be a key stepping stone in a great coastal migration of humans from Africa via the Arabian peninsula, along the coastal regions of the Indian mainland and towards Southeast Asia, Japan and Oceania. First, the European and Central Asian sailors tried to make slaves out of them. This made them wary of the outside world and have always treated outsiders with hostility. Then the British moved into these islands and tried to make contact with them. This contact led to spread of diseases and also alcoholism and other bane of the modern society. History repeated itself, and like the Amazon and Mayan tribes, the populations of these tribes also plummeted.

Great Andamanese who’s population used to be 5000+, plummeted to 600 by 1901. Today less than 30 of them survive. Jarawas which were also in few thousands have dropped to 300 and restricted to a small part of their former territory – the Jarawa Reserve in the west coast of the South and Middle Andamans. There is a main highway going through their reserve which has become the source of contact and interactions between these tribes and the settlers. The settlers being mostly people from West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Ranchi. Even though there is a Supreme Court order to shut down the road, it is still operational.

Onge which live in Little Andaman have less than a 100 people left. The only tribe which still maintains no contact with the outside world are are the Sentinelese. There are an estimated 300 left on the North Sentinel Island.

Just last month, one of the sub-tribes of Andamanese became extinct when the last of its member passed away.

Tsunami

Tsunami has transformed the islands and left its scar forever. There is life before the Tsunami and then there is the life after.

There was a lot of lives lost and a lot of damage to the property. The real damage came not from the wave of water but from the earthquakes that shook the islands during that time. The islands got tilted and land got submerged into waters or got lifted up. A lot of coral reefs died because they were lifted by a few feet. The little change in depth can change the temperature and that led to the mass dying of the corals. Some even got lifted above the sea level. A lot of fertile land got submerged and now they are just marshes with submerged and abandoned houses in between and a lot of palm trees without their crowns.

Dead corals that were pushed above the water by the earthquake

The Tsunami also changed the social landscape of the islands. The government lifted the ban on logging and opened up the rainforests to support the people. A lot of money that was pumped into the relief efforts has changed the economic balance of the island people. Everyone owns a badly built fishing boat that were presented to them post-tsunami. Now most of them are broken down because of the bad quality and whats left are used for tourism purposes. There has been a boom in tourism too. These obscure islands became popular. All the money that came in as relief were quickly converted to resorts.

Wildlife

This was the first time I’ve experienced ‘island ecosystem’. Basically, these islands have been remote for so long that, no mammals have reached here. Every time I heard something, I would look in the understory to look out for some deer etc.. but then realise that there are no mammals in these islands and the sound was either another person or a stray dog. The real diversity of these islands is in the plants, reptiles and birds. Most birds here are endemic and are relatives of the mainland birds like the Andaman Serpent Eagle, Andaman Coucal, Andaman Teal, Andaman something or the other! The same story goes with the snakes and lizards too. One of the extraordinary reptile here is the Andaman Day Gecko Phelsuma

Andaman Day Gecko

Unlike regular geckos, this one is diurnal, very colourful and you are almost sure to find one on every areca (betel nut) tree if you look carefully. They are most active during mid day when they come out to catch flies that land on the inflorescence of these plants.

Andaman Crake – One of the many endemic birds

Olive Ridley Turtle nesting on the Ramnagar beach

Heritiera littoralis seed

My favorite is this mangrove plant whose boat-shaped seed has a small ‘keel’ or sail on top to help it disperse across the open oceans riding the waves. Were these the inspiration when humans first made the sail boats ?

The other highlight was the Edible-nest swiftlets for which I’ll write a separate post.