Imran Muzaffar

Louis Olivier Bancoult was four years old in 1968 when a medical emergency took him and his family away from their island home in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The 2,000-km sea journey from Peros Banhos in the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius was planned as a temporary move so his sister could be treated after an accident. But when they tried to return home, all channels had been sealed.

Louis Olivier Bancoult was four years old in 1968 when a medical emergency took him and his family away from their island home in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The 2,000-km sea journey from Peros Banhos in the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius was planned as a temporary move so his sister could be treated after an accident. But when they tried to return home, all channels had been sealed.

Anthony Raj is the owner and captain of a fishing boat that has been hunting tuna in the Indian Ocean for years. He and his crew of 11 are preparing for a high seas fishing expedition later in May. It will take them hundreds of nautical miles away from their home in Thathoor, a coastal village in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. “The ocean is like our mother,” Raj tells Dialogue Earth. “Whenever we turn to it for sustenance, it never sends us back empty handed.