In the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, women have been gathering seaweed from the ocean bed by hand for generations. Photographer Raajadharshini first heard of this community via a strip of newspaper her food was wrapped in, and she’s since made it her mission to tell their story, and to highlight their urgent need for better protective gear in the face of rapidly deteriorating climate conditions. She tells Avani Thakkar about the challenges these women face from elements often beyond their control, and the moments of joy and camaraderie that get them through.
They don’t get exposure to what they actually need, such as protective gear and clean drinking water.
Rameshwaram, located in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in India, is known for many things—it’s one of the holiest places of worship for Hindus, the closest point to Sri Lanka, and home to Dhanushkodi, a “ghost town” ravaged by the infamous 1964 cyclone that remains deserted to date.
Tamil photographer Raajadharshini has been frequenting Rameshwaram for over a year, but not for its temples or tourist trails. Instead, she journeys through remote villages and beachside groves to meet Maheshwari, Pushpavalli, Radha and some 40 other women, clad in sarees with tattooed arms, between the ages of 20 and 80. These are some of the region’s seaweed farmers who work in harmony with the ocean to earn a livelihood.
She first heard about this community via a strip of newspaper her street food was wrapped in, a clipping that read “Seaweed farming is booming,” accompanied by an image of a woman beside her bamboo raft. Curious to learn more, she called up a local seaweed research centre who provided some initial directions on where to find these female farmers.
One rented scooter and many hours later, Raajadharshini arrived at the village of Olaikuda. “One of the women saw my camera and asked if I was a photographer because a lot of local press comes to interview them but nothing really happens after. They don’t get exposure to what they actually need, such as protective gear and clean drinking water,” she explains. She experienced these challenges firsthand as she spent days with them out at Palk Bay—a key seaweed biodiversity hotbed.
Their work remains precarious; entire yields can be lost overnight to the force of a single storm.
“Thet don’t have any footwear or sturdy equipment while diving; they wear slippers, scruffy goggles and have a plastic bag tied around their waist in which they collect the seaweed,” Raajadharshini says. “Their calloused hands are covered by torn gloves which they patch up with fabric or rubber bands. One farmer even showed me a deep scar near her thigh from when a sea of fish poked her.”
Raajadharshini wants this series to be a call to action to relieve this community from the hardships caused by the glaring lack of protective gear and resources. In addition to documenting their stories, the photographer started a fundraiser to help safeguard their health and economic stability.
I also wanted to show the joys left in this unpredictable environment and that life goes on.
Despite the adversities, seaweed farming has been exclusively practiced by women in this region for generations, many of them assisting their mothers since childhood while the fathers were out fishing in the deep-end. Their day starts at 4am, when they wrap up household chores before embarking on a long walk from their village to the coastline, having moved further inland after the disastrous 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Their seasoned palms, calloused as they may be, hold decades of resilience and strength. The first thing these women do when they step into the water is very ritualistic, Raajadharshini tells me. They pray quietly to the ocean and splash water on their forehands as a gesture of respect for the place that sustains their families.
“They are masters of farming techniques with incredible knowledge of tidal patterns and marine ecology,” she says. “Their routines speak volumes of their expertise: constructing bamboo frames, tying stringed seaweed rows, protecting the crops from marine grazers, and drying the harvest on burning hot sand. Yet their work remains precarious; entire yields can be lost overnight to the force of a single storm.”
Along the coastline, nature speaks and the evidence of climate change is clear. The water bed has dragged back and the increasing severity and unpredictability of storms threatens these farmers’ harvested yield floating on bamboo rafts. “Seaweed needs a certain temperature to grow but the warming of the ocean has led to reduced vegetation; their yield is 20 percent less than it was 50 years ago,” explains Raajadharshini, who reckoned with her own understanding of the changing environment while shooting this series. “I saw up-close how plastic pollution directly affects these people’s livelihood. Nail extensions and branded crisp packets—material luxuries unfamiliar to these women and which they’ve likely never used—get tangled with the seaweed, eventually rotting it. There is less room for it to replenish and it requires manual removal, undertaken by these seaweed farmers, to restore it.”
They are agents of environmental knowledge, self-sustained livelihood and sisterhood.
These farmers’ relationship with the ocean is far from romantic and shaped by a constant negotiation with elements often beyond their control. There is a bit of hopelessness, notes Raajadharshini, not just in this particular community but among rural laborers across India, forced to survive in flawed systems. “Every subject comes with its own sensitivities and I don’t want to eliminate that,” she says, “but I also wanted to show the joys left in this unpredictable environment and that life goes on.”
What are these joys, you may wonder? It’s the moments of camaraderie as these women chat non-stop in chest-deep water in sarees, cracking inside jokes and swapping stories. This sisterhood is marked in ink, each one bearing an arm tattoo with ocean motifs. Shared satisfaction ripples through the group when someone resurfaces with a bag brimming with seaweed, along with child-like excitement at the sight of a new type of fish darting by, and they navigate currents with an intuition that is both physical and ancestral. “I want this series to be not only about fortitude and oceanic intimacy, but also an act of reframing,” says Raajadharshini. “These women are not passive subjects of rural labor. They are agents of environmental knowledge, self-sustained livelihood and sisterhood.”