Trombay is known not just for its creek prawns and javla, but also its crabs, nevti (mudskippers), and kala kolim (black prawns) in the chikhal and salt pans around it. During the bustling morning  market auction in Trombay, avid customers, especially locals, flock to acquire the delicacy of crabs.

Crabs are a lucrative catch, fetching prices ranging from Rs. 600 to 2000 depending on their weight. Previously, Trombay was known for both the khari chimbori and gori chimbori species. However, gori chimbori has become exceedingly rare in the chikhal of recent times.

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Pushpa and Indubai in their 60s, are the last remaining women in Trombay, brave enough to venture into the chikhal of the wet mangrove forest to catch crabs and mudskippers.

They spend hours scanning the surface for the crab’s telltale trail marks and gauging the size of the nest hole for the presence of matured crabs to forage – all while effortlessly gliding over the quicksand, a tacit skill that was practiced by numerous women in the past.

While all other women except Pushpa and Indubai have left this generational livelihood, women are still the face of the retail market for crabs. They purchase crabs wholesale from male crab fishers or from a tribe called Kakori who specializes in catching crabs in significant quantities.

While many men pursue crab fishing as a part-time occupation, it's rare to find a man selling their catch at the Trombay wholesale market. Instead, most of them prefer to sell directly to women vendors or hand it over to their wives who then take care of the market aspect.

However, these stories belong to the past. The children who learned their earliest fishing lessons through crab hunting are now old, and the new generation of children either aren't permitted to enter the toxic chikhal or simply aren't interested in doing so.

While Indubai and Pushpa have remained in this practice throughout their lives, others have moved on to become boat owners, while still others have departed from their traditional fishing occupation.

The presence of industrial pollutants, waste from dumping grounds, and plastic wrappers suffocating the crabs within their nests has significantly reduced the number of crabs in Trombay. Those who continue crab fishing might indeed represent the last generation engaging in this occupation.

Though the rising chikhal has had a detrimental effect on crabs, it has worked in favor of flamingoes and mangroves. Trombay has been witnessing flocks of flamingoes visiting their Koliwada like never before. The flamingoes that feed on nevti, a local delicacy of mudskipper have severely affected the quantity and quality of this fish. For this reason, the flamingoes that fascinate Mumbai do not make the fishers of Trombay as happy as the rest of the city.

The fishers of Trombay have long called for building a floating jetty instead of a concrete one to control the rise of chikhal but these have gone unheeded. The Bombay Municipal Corporation seems to have other plans for Trombay Koliwada. Trombay’s fishers found this out by reading in the newspapers about the City Corporation’s proposal to start an eco-tourism project there, centered around a flamingo watch tower!

Yes, crabs have also found a small place in this project at a crab pond with turtles along with a Mangrove cafe and kayaking.  

Though the villagers are upset that they found out about this project only through the newspapers, some are also hopeful that it might open up new avenues of livelihood related to tourism. Ferrying tourists, setting up restaurants, and allied tourism businesses hold more prospects for the future given the slow dying of fishing in these parts.

However, how such an ecotourism project might affect different fishers within the community is difficult to foresee.

As mangroves spread in the Koliwada’s fishing commons, the Forest Department declares it a protected zone, restricting its use by fishers, who for so long have been its indigenous custodians. The wet forest is entering the village, the chikhal that holds it is rising, leading to an infestation of flamingoes, and these make way for the Forest department and the municipality to enter the socio-natural, economic, and cultural life-worlds of Trombay’s fishers.

Only time can tell how this project will shape the ecology currently shared by the chikhal, crabs, mangroves, mudskippers, plastic waste, industrial fluids, and now, flamingoes. And where the crabs that are currently everywhere, will go in the future.