Paper short abstract:

What insights can we learn from navigators on the impacts of local and regional climate change patterns? We explore ‘Marjan’, the under-researched traditional monsoon navigation knowledge that guides seafarers in the Arabian Sea between the Lakshadweep archipelago’s atolls and mainland India.

Paper long abstract:

Traditional seafarers' knowledge links local, regional and global weather patterns and may offer an early warning system that has implications for adaptation to climate change. By travelling through dynamic seascapes and atmospheric conditions, navigators can recognize and may predict local and regional weather patterns over time. Seafarers engage in a broad range of dynamic movements, including winds, sea currents, upwelling, and the activities of animals and plants. Observed spatial and temporal environmental changes compared to long-term trends can provide navigators with insight into future scenarios. As seafarers' traditional navigation knowledge draws on environmental observations, their insights of inter-generational environmental change can contribute to the account of local and regional impacts of global climate change.

While traditional navigation knowledge has been studied in the Pacific Ocean, it has attracted significantly less academic attention in the Indian Ocean. Our interdisciplinary team presents an under-researched navigation knowledge, 'Marjan' (Malayalam), a cultural heritage that seafaring people use in the Arabian Sea on their 200-400 km journeys between India's Lakshadweep's atoll communities and Kerala's coasts. Traditional navigation in the Arabian Sea relies primarily on the monsoons' seasonally changing winds. Islanders developed their maritime skills as an adaptation for supporting their livelihood that depends on coconut processing and fishing. Through interviews with traditional navigators in Lakshadweep, we explore 'Marjan', a knowledge-system inherently linked with mobility and influenced by modern technological changes, for its role in small, low-lying, highly vulnerable tropical island communities' adaptation to climate change.