People watch helplessly as the sea nibbles the Konkan coast, swallowing groves and beaches, and shallowing creeks
Sadanand Tandel’s house is the dream of every tourist. A terrific sea view, waving coconut fronds and in a few dozen steps one can walk into the sea waves. Through Tandel’s eyes, however, the view is somber.
Till 1991, 30 of his coconut trees stood where the sea is now. The distance between the waves and the walls of his house is narrowing every year—not slowly and surely any longer, but at a terrifying clip. Tandel’s predicament is not very different from that of other residents of villages along the Konkan coast. Studies by a group of scientists from Pune indicate that the sea level along the west coast of Maharashtra has gone up by five to six cm in the past 20 years, making the tide move steadily inwards and the water level in the creeks rise alarmingly. The reasons, they say, are global warming and disturbance from construction along the sea coast.
Sea level on the rise Shrikant Karlekar, who heads the geography department at SP College in Pune and specializes in coastal geography, has been monitoring geomorphological changes along the Konkan coast from Dahanu, close to Mumbai, to Vengurle in south Sindhudurg for the past 20 years, along with faculty members and students. Their studies reveal the sea level rise has been mostly gradual, with periodic episodes of a sudden rise. The most recent episode was on the full moon night of December 29, 2009, when the high tide rose by 4 cm near Ratnagiri town. “The previous year on the same day the rise was 2 cm,” said Karlekar, who has written several papers on the phenomenon. “In recent years the sea level has risen at a much faster pace than in the early years of our study.” The five-six cm rise translates into saltwater intruding up to one kilometer inland, damaging mangroves, eroding beaches, and filling creeks with sand and grit from erosion. The impact is more along the flatlands than in areas where the coast is rocky. Sindhudurg district with flatlands is the worst affected, while Raigad and Ratnagiri districts, which have rocky coastlines, have had relatively less impact, Karlekar said. 40 hectares lost in 15 years Tandel remembers the sea waves first entered his village Deobagh in Malwan tehsil of Sindhudurg during the 1978 monsoon. Since then the village has lost about 32 hectares (ha), mostly valuable coconut groves, to erosion because of two reasons. One, the rising tides, and two, the rising level of the Karli Creek. The village is a strip of land extending into the sea, with the creek to its south and the sea to its north and west.