World Oceans Day 2026: How diving is changing lives in Andaman’s Karen and Ranchi communities

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A scooba diver in Andaman | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Children from the Karen and Ranchi ethnic groups of the Andaman Islands learned about the sea the way other children learn a family language.

They inherited it from their fathers and grandfathers, who could read the weather in a shifting cloud, sense currents in the movement of water, and spot a turtle or reef fish at a place where outsiders saw only blue. The ocean was never something to be conquered or discovered. It was simply part of everyday life, as familiar as a sidewalk that shared a border with home.

For generations, this intimate knowledge of the sea rarely translated into economic opportunity. Today however, in a transformation unfolding across Havelock Island, descendants of fishermen and boatmen are becoming diving instructors and marine guides, turning an inherited relationship with the ocean into a profession that is reshaping lives, families and entire communities.

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Husna, Gypsy Diver’s first dive boat that has carried divers to safety. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Helping steer this transformation are Poonam Darne and her husband D Santosh, founders of Gypsy Divers, a PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors, one of the world’s most recognised dive training organisations) affiliated five-star dive school and resort located on Havelock’s Beach No. 2.

Poonam, 50, is among India’s earliest female scuba divers and instructors, while Santosh, a theatre actor who has worked alongside Amitabh Bachchan and Mithun Chakraborty , brought his own unconventional journey to the islands. Together, they established Gypsy Divers in 2016 with a vision that extended beyond tourism. In the decade since, the school has trained more than a 1,000 divers from the Karen and Ranchi community, school children and recreational enthusiasts and Army personnel undertaking rescue diver certification programmes.