Paradise in Trouble: How an Ethnic Community Is Fighting Sea Cucumber Pirates

This is a never-before-filmed story of depleting resources in the idyllic Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and the people on the front lines.

The Karens—originally from Myanmar to the north—are old settlers on the islands, whose reefs are home to abundant sea cucumbers. But these have now become India’s most frequently trafficked marine species: the "new shark fin." Between 2010 and 2021 at least 101.40 tons were poached and smuggled, mainly to East and Southeast Asia for consumption.

The police were assigned to safeguard them, when the administration acknowledged the cucumbers’ contribution to a healthy ocean and therefore fisheries stocks. Laws punish a cucumber-poacher on par with a tiger-killer. The cops also have a secret weapon: the Karen fishers’ intimate knowledge of ocean protection.

Most poachers are coming from a different Myanmar today, politically unstable and poorer, where mafia operatives offer small fortunes to those who make the potentially deadly voyage down south. This includes avoiding two navies, navigating crocodiles around punishing mangroves—and now the watchful eyes of the Karens.

The islands are currently hot in the news for government plans to drill offshore and develop the region into a massive shipping hub—"India’s Singapore." This will probably spell doom for a region already facing climate-induced bleaching events and ecological destruction. The Karens protecting cucumbers is a small resistance against the shift in consumption and development patterns here.