Thiruvananthapuram: Being a member of a fisherman's family at Valiyathura, Aneesha Ani Benedict had to push herself really hard to reach marine engineering even after an outstanding academic performance at St Anthony’s School, Valiyathura. Her fisherman father who toils to make both ends meet, bestowed all his hopes on his second daughter Aneesha who struggled in a locality being fast eroded by the sea.
Yet the fishermen connect closely knit Aneesha with biodiversity zones linked to the ocean. During her Bsc Botany and Biotechnology at St Xavier’s Thumba, she came up with a Marine Bio-Diversity Register of the district in association with the Kerala State Biodiversity Board (KSBB). Being the first of its kind in the country, it was noticed at the first National Science Congress.
This August she will be flying to Shrewsbury, UK to explore biodiversity the way evolution theorist Charles Darwin, explored it. She will be among 25 privileged students in the world to benefit from the Darwin Scholarship programme . Her expertise in the study on coastal reefs paved the way for the scholarship.
During her short stint in UK she we will visit places like Cwm Idwal National Nature Reserve in Snowdonia's Ogwen Valley, Wales. She will use Charles Darwin’s first-hand observations and recordings to help examine the underlying geology of sites. “We will study biodiversity through field work. I will leave for London this August,” she said.
Fisheries Minister J. Mercykutty Amma has announced that Aneesha will be given a scholarship for Msc Marine Biology and Ocean studies though it was withheld earlier as she was studying out of state at the Port Blair campus of Pondicherry University.
