Two of this year’s biggest stories converged together on the oceanographic research ship R/V Roger Revelle, which just returned to Marmagoa after studying the Arabian Sea in the wake of Cyclone Biparjoy. Right alongside the unprecedented lovefest between prime minister Narendra Modi and the entire political establishment of the USA in Washington DC, the pioneering expedition of the Indo-US joint research initiative EKAMSAT (the acronym stands for Enhancing Knowledge of the Arabian sea Marine environment through Science and Advanced Training, and also has the lovely Sanskrit meaning of “there is only one truth”) managed to collect crucial data about how air-sea interactions predict and predicate the all-important monsoons.
All this is incredibly fortuitous, just as the west coast of India has undergone the most disrupted first month of rains in living memory, which has the effect of petrifying the entire subcontinent about what might befall us next in this age of climate change. Just when it matters most, this endeavour is undertaking precisely the cutting-edge scientific inquiry needed, in collaboration between two countries which have themselves passed an historic threshold in their seemingly-unstoppable coming-together. At the heart of this burgeoning partnership are NASA and ISRO, and the visionary bio-optical oceanographer, Goa’s own Dr Joaquim Goes.
Goes began his scientific career – and met his equally brilliant wife Dr. Helga do Rosario Gomes – at the National Institute of Oceanography in Dona Paula. They continue to maintain close ties to their ancestral homeland, despite an extraordinary career trajectory that has catapulted them from Nagoya University in Japan to the faculty of Columbia University in New York City. When we met after the EKAMSAT expedition (where my oldest son was on his team) this distinguished scientist told me that “growing up in Cortalim, my siblings and I were enrolled in the Our Lady of Perpetual Succour School, and after school, we never went home directly without stopping at the ‘mansher’ to swim. This is what sparked my interest in water.”
He was born in Kenya but came to Goa after xenophobic nationalist politics made it difficult for Indians to stay there: “I was only 7, and not mature enough to understand what was going on, but it must have been very traumatic. My parents lost everything. The first few years back home we grew up without electricity or running water. It was hard but we adapted quickly. I was a slightly above average student, as we in Kenya, had the advantage of having studied in decent English medium schools. And we were lucky to have the most amazing teachers, who taught us to think beyond our textbooks. One of my English teachers – her name was Ezilda D’Cruz - was so ahead of her time that she even discussed the controversial Lady Chatterly’s Lover as part of her class. It was the most enjoyable part of my growing up.”
One career epiphany occurred in Japan in 1995, when the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three scientists for describing how the ozone layer is “the Achilles heel of the biosphere.” Goes was galvanized: “Fortunately for me, the lab that I worked in had the world’s most renowned ocean biogeochemists. We knew this ozone hole was allowing the sun’s UV radiation to impinge on our planet causing skin cancer among humans, but we had little to no idea what the radiation was doing to life in the oceans. I was interested in the big picture - what was the impact on the food chain? Working in a state-of-the-art biochemistry lab gave me an opportunity to work on understanding how UV light affected carbon fixation patterns and carbon transport during photosynthesis by phytoplankton, and I discovered that UV light impaired the production of one of the most essential compounds required for zooplankton and fish. This discovery brought an end to the use of UV light as a means of controlling bacterial and viral infection in aquaculture farms.”
Later, “I showed for the first time how satellite data could be used to map nutrients in the sea, and how these primary satellite datasets could be used to map atmospheric carbon sequestration into the oceans.” That is when the American scientific establishment came calling, but “my interest in studying the seas around India never diminished after I left for the USA. Most of my work is linked to how climate change is impacting the ecosystem of the Arabian Sea, one of the fastest warming seas on our planet. We have already begun seeing manifestations of this warming trend in the form of outbreaks of large algal blooms, loss of biodiversity, alterations in the food chain, increasing frequency and intensity of cyclones as well as disruptions to our monsoons.”
Goes says that the future is going to be challenging, but Goa has many advantages to help to mitigate the situation. He described how “over the last few days, after a prolonged delay, we finally experienced the real monsoons. As I sat on my balcony, I saw most of this God-given water make its way back into the sea, let go without a care instead of being used. Why should we continue to allow this criminal waste, when we are also blessed with fertile soil and plenty of sun, and there are lots of ways to make them all flourish together for our collective benefit, environmental health and the happiness of our citizens?
As everyone knows in India’s smallest state, we’re currently not heading in the right direction on any aspect of sustainability, and getting worse fast. Goes says all is not lost however, if we encourage farming instead of real estate, “provide incentives to schools that teach agriculture, incentivize colleges to develop innovative technologies to make Goa the basket of food production. We desperately need to stop the destruction of our forests and mangroves in the name of development. I wish our elected leaders knew how vulnerable Goa is to climate change, and how we could lose all that we are naturally endowed with because of short term gains.”