Naveen Namboothri
Programme Head & Academic Convenor, Dakshin Foundation
Programme Head & Academic Convenor, Dakshin Foundation
Naveen Namboothri is a founder trustee and ex-Director of Dakshin Foundation, currently serves as a Programme Head & Academic Convenor. Trained as marine biologist, he has worked in diverse coastal, marine and island systems across India. For his doctoral work in the early 2000s, Naveen studied the coral-boring fauna of Great Nicobar, and has been engaged with the islands ever since. His interests include the ecological and conservation aspects of coral reefs, mangroves and a range of other ecosystems in the islands. In the Andaman islands, he has helped conceptualise fisheries interventions, build ANET's citizen science initiatives and long-term monitoring of coral reef ecosystems, and also helped build Dakshin’s Environmental Education Programme including the production of the publication Treasured Islands. In addition to leading numerous marine biology courses, Naveen has supervised a large number of students with interest in marine systems. Currently, Naveen heads the marine component of the Long Term Ecological Observatory project based at ANET.
Meera Anna Oommen
Associate Director, Dakshin Foundation
Associate Director, Dakshin Foundation
Meera holds a doctoral degree in life sciences from the University of Technology, Sydney. At ANET, she contributes to institutional growth by coordinating research activities, and institutional development. Meera has been involved in a number of projects in the islands from the early 2000s. In 2001 and 2001, she carried out the first field study of the Nicobar treeshrew (Tupaia nicobarica) on Great Nicobar and assisted with the leatherback project at the monitoring site at Galathea. Her current academic work focuses on incorporating insights from multiple disciplines to understand conflicts in natural resource governance and conservation. This work also focuses on research at the interface of environmental history, anthropology and ecology, and their interactions in the context of traditional practices and species. Currently, Meera is focusing on establishing the Centre for Island Sustainability, a research and intervention platform for the islands at ANET, and also carrying out research on some aspects of conflict between people and saltwater crocodiles in the in the islands.
Adhith Swaminathan
Base Manager, ANET
Base Manager, ANET
Adhith has been fascinated by the marine environment, sea turtles in particular, since the age of 10. Since completing his masters from the University of York in 2009, he has been working with Dakshin as a part of the Biodiversity and Resource Monitoring programme. In his first project with Dakshin, he worked as a researcher in Rushikulya, Orissa, India conducting mass nesting census over two consecutive nesting seasons from 2008-2010. Since 2010, he has been working on the leatherback sea turtle monitoring project based in Little Andaman of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India. The project, which was initiated in 2008 to study the nesting recovery of the leatherback turtles post the tsunami and earthquake of 2004, has evolved in to a long-term monitoring programme. Adhith is currently the Base Manager at ANET and is responsible for the smooth functioning of all aspects of the field station.
Saw John Aung Thong
Operations Manager, ANET
Operations Manager, ANET
Saw John Aung Thong is the Operations Manager at ANET. Hailing from Webi in Middle Andaman, John is one of ANET's first employees, and has been instrumental in all aspects of the field station's growth and expansion. John is one of the architects of the Andaman Karen Crafts (AKC), a cooperative that ANET helped establish to facilitate local economic empowerment of the Karen community while revitalising their cultural heritage and conserving local ecosystems and sustainable resource use practices. John has been an integral part of ANET's pioneering surveys and expeditions in its early years and has a wealth of knowledge on all aspects of island ecology and conservation. Currently, John divides his time between the ANET base and Webi and also assists with the activities of AKC.