Pongal at Point Calimere - the mangroves of Muthupet

Muthupet is a huge lagoon to the west of Kodiakarai, where we were camping.  I learnt from this article in The Hindu, that Muthupet is ten times larger than Pichavaram (?, huh?  really?).

....But Sunderbans and Pichavaram are the largest and second largest mangroves in the world, aren't they?  So I wonder what that article was referring to.  I looked them both up on Google maps, and discovered that the Muthupet lagoon is huge, but only 4% of it is mangrove according to Wikipedia.   Pichavaram, on the other hand has a much more intricate and widespread network of canals, and the mangrove area is much larger therefore.

So I guess the article was referring to the lagoon size only.

Mangrove ecosystems are fascinating - the salinity of the water as fresh water meets sea water, the adaptations of the flora to these natural conditions, the tidal up and down.  These mangroves are wonderful natural barriers against storms and tidal waves too.

Leaving the canals

The tributaries of the Cauvery that flow into the lagoon before emptying into the sea can be seen in the map below, as also the worrying spread of salt pans to the north.

How do salt pans adversely affect these intertidal ecosystems?  They increase the salinity of the area isnt it?  In a regular mangrove, high tides will bring in salt water, evaporation during low tide will increase soil salinity and the high tides will bring in water to flush it out as well, so the salinity is in a range.

I guess if more and more salt pans are created than salinity of soils only increases, and there is nothing to mediate and regulate the salt levels?

View Larger Map

The HUGE lagoon - shallow but wide

 
It was wonderful to be out in that vast expanse of the lagoon, once we had navigated the canals that take us there.  I wish we could have just drifted in the waters, without the sound of our noisy outboard motor, but that was not to be.

Let's just rewind and recall that entire day.

Uttara writes about Muthupet

I think MNS should be renamed MTCFS (Madras Tea-Coffee-Food Society) because everyone seems to love their food and caffeine.

Day 2. 14th January. Saturday. 5 am

We set out in the 3 vehicles to Muthupet. We were going to the mangrove forests. The journey took more than an hour and a half so there was time for everyone to sleep a little longer. A little while before reaching the destination, the vehicles stopped for tea and vadai. But I can’t tell you anything about the food because I, like the others in Tempo Traveller#3, refused to get off the bus.

(Me:  I got off and I must say the vadais were excellent, and so greedy and self-absorbed was I, that I overlooked getting some for the rest in the tempo - sorry girls and guys!)

When our bus finally reached its stop, we got off and walked towards the bank of a small river where 5 boats were docked. We occupied three boats in total, each boat holding about 11 people excluding the two men who did the steering (actually only one controlled the propeller/rudder while the other sat in the bow).

(Me:  By this time, Rags had worked himself into a fine frenzy about not knowing how to swim, shaking hands and saying final goodbyes, with nice-knowing-you exchanges!  And our dear Arun slunk away and refused to climb on!)

The people in the boat I went in, a blue boat, included Kedar, Ambika aunty, Chandrasekar uncle, Preston uncle, Venkat uncle, Dr Alaganandam, Raji aunty, Hemal aunty and Vishwanath. The journey along the river took a long time. The vegetation by the water’s edge slowly changed from Prosopis juliflora to mangrove.

Spot the Pied KF in the Prosposis.
(We also saw a black-capped KF!)

The boats cut through the water just as the rivers had cut and split up the land into numerous pieces. Along the way we saw many kingfishers, cormorants, brahminy kites (these were so common, it was starting to get annoying) and gulls flying in the sky and diving and swimming in the water.

A dove eyes us curiously from the mangrove

A bobbing cormorant

Everywhere cormorants landed on the water and after paddling a bit, they dived in and soon reappeared quite some distance away. Everywhere in the trees there seemed to be a nest. Everywhere there were pied kingfishers sitting on a branch, hovering in the air and then plunging from a great height into the water. Everywhere gulls flapped and flew about. Everywhere there were birds.

The board walk fiasco

In the end we reached the board walk that went through the mangrove forests. So the boats were docked and we got off onto wooden planks and walked till we reached a hexagonal shelter (built off the ground where the slush and the breathing roots were) with benches all along the sides and a sloping roof and open on the sides. When we looked out into the forest at the back of the shelter, there was a sorry sight awaiting us all.

The boardwalk was in a dismal condition. Most of the planks were broken and were lying around on the soil among the roots. Somebody had taken the trouble to build this elevated boardwalk but nobody seemed to care about maintaining it. It was quite disheartening.

What a shame!

To see how it looked in 2005, click here.

But we couldn’t stop now. There was only one thing left for it now and that was to walk in the mud. Of course, this meant that the enthusiasm that had hung in the air instantly vapourised. A lot of the people like my mother, Rags uncle, Suresh uncle, Chandrashekar uncle, Kirthana, Jayamurthy uncle, Dr. Ravi, Ramanan sir, Vishwanath and Raji aunty took the smart choice and decided to stay back.

Then there was the second category of people like Ambika aunty (and Hemal!)  who walked the first few steps and wisely decided to stay back.

A closer look at the Avicennia aerial roots, which help the
plant absorb oxygen from the air

Last but not least there were always people like Kedar, Vikas, Prasanna aunty, Preston uncle and Venkat uncle who were the adventurous kind who did not chicken out even when they found out they would have to go through the swamp barefoot! We started off through the marsh, threading carefully between the roots and the dangerously slippery-looking areas. Things went wrong almost at once, when Kedar slipped and fell in the mud, luckily for him, not face first. After that, everyone treaded carefully, holding onto anything to steady themselves, even other people.

The mud was squishy and squelchy and the water was grey.  Some of the planks that had broken off the walk and fallen into the water were laid out like stepping stones and walking on them felt much better than walking in mud that was under water too dirty to see what you were stepping on. The only problem with the wooden boards was that they would abruptly sink when your feet landed on them; sometimes the boards were unexpectedly unstable and tilted all of a sudden, and sometimes the water hid the sharp nails hammered into them, causing your feet to experience an acute sharp pain. So it was always a relief when we once more got to the usable sections of the board walk but they never lasted long and we had to tread through muck again. The board walk was also not as long as we thought it was though we couldn’t go till the very end because we’d probably have had to wade through waist deep water at the very least.

Only two birds were spotted on the walk, one being a rose-ringed parakeet. A call was also heard though I don’t remember what heron Vikas said it was. With the end of the board walk in ruins, there was nothing in for it except to return to the little shelter where the rest were waiting. Again the dreaded journey through mud resumed and everyone had to taken precautions (nobody wanted to do a Kedar). Once at the shelter we first washed up our feet and then boarded our boats once more.

Preston and the "sea horses"

The lagoon proper!

We sailed out to a wide open region where a lot of fishing was going on. There was a man who looked like he was riding a horse, Venkat uncle pointed out. His posture was just right. But Ambika aunty was skeptical because the horse would have had to have been fully submerged in the water. It was a sea horse, Preston uncle explained solemnly!

"See they are trained to breathe through a tube, and can you see the reins in his hands.  Look, did you just see the tail swish?!"




There we turned around the boats away from the man on the “sea horse” and made for the place where the vehicles were waiting for us. It was closer to noon and none of us had eaten breakfast. Once at Muthupet, we found the eatery we were searching for, Muthumani unavagam, and we ate breakfast there. There were dosais and parottas to be ordered. As usual, all the members with their large appetites wolfed down their breakfast in seconds.

The plan after breakfast was to go to a birding spot some 6-7 km away.

Next up - Udayamarthandapuram sanctuary.

Further readings

India's Mangrove cover, up.