According to government data, in the last four years, marine animal deaths along coastal areas in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) have increased by 183 per cent.
As stated by Mumbai Mangrove Conservation Unit (MMCU), which comes under the state mangrove cell, marine animal mortalities have increased from 12 cases in 2015 to 34 cases in the first nine months of 2018. In 2016 and 2017, 21 and 27 deaths were reported respectively. According to MMCU officials, prior to 2015, there was no protocol to record such cases.
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Makarand Ghodke, Assistant Conservator of Forest of State Mangrove Cell, said that as most of the carcasses are completely decomposed, conducting post-mortems becomes difficult.
The state is planning to initiate a five-year study in order to understand the distribution, population, behaviour, and threats to marine life along the Konkan coast by installing noise monitoring instruments at sea from November.
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