My research interests concern issues of conservation, particularly the implications of climate change for marine ecosystems, the rational management of marine systems and fisheries in India, and the interface between policy, traditional practices, and ecosystem management. I have worked in several reef systems around India, and along the Kenyan coast. My chief concerns are in furthering the fledgling tradition of good field ecological research in marine environments in India, and in helping fill some of the significant gaps in the very basic knowledge we require to manage them. A long-held fascination for their aesthetic irresponsibility, together with generous helpings of inertia and serendipity, has drawn me to marine ecosystems and their conservation. I obtained my Master's degree in Wildlife Science from the Wildlife Institute of India in 1995. For my master's research I worked on coral community composition and its response to human disturbance in the intertidal reefs of the Gulf of Kutch in Northwest India. I am one of NCF's founder-trustees, and direct its reef program. I continue to be interested in reef community dynamics and disturbance, and my doctoral research focuses on the consequences of temperature-induced mass-mortality of coral on the reef systems of the Lakshadweep atoll reefs, Western India.