When Professor Bella S Galil, scientist at the National Institute of Oceanography in Israel, was a third grader in school, her teacher wanted the class to write down what they wanted to be when they grew up.
‘’Almost all the girls wrote they wanted to be either teachers or nurses and one even wrote ballerina. And I, a nice little girl with braids on either side wrote that I wanted to be ‘a pirate’,’’ recalled Bella Galil, with a smile.
The teachers, who were obviously shocked, called her mother and said ‘’something is not really okay’’ with little Bella. Her mother closed the matter with a single sentence - ‘’We don’t have any pirates in the family.’’
The story was forgotten until Bella completed her doctoral degree in marine biology and the family had a celebration. Her father, raising a toast to Bella said, ‘’To Bella, who fulfilled a childhood dream - she goes out in boats and brings back the treasures of the sea!’’
Bella was always thus, curious about places where people don’t usually go and see things that people don’t usually see. ‘’We are all terrestrial beings and I had this urge to go beyond the usual. I feel that this innate curiosity is what drives the scientist in me, and maybe all scientists, whether they are into medical research, physics, geology or biology. This spirit of curiosity is the core of science,’’ said Bella, who is in town for a lecture at the Sasthra Bhavan on Tuesday afternoon and also to train some young scientists in the identification and taxonomy of crabs.
This is Bella’s sixth visit to India and the first to the state and she is excited about having been able to combine her interest in marine biology with the opportunity to have a look at the cultural richness of Southern India.
If she had not been a marine biologist Bella said she would probably have been an archaeologist as history and movement of people have always fascinated her.
Just as she is now captivated by the movement of marine animals through ballast tanks of ships as well as hull fouling, when thousands of barnacles, mussels, algae, sponges and sea squirts hitch-hike their way through the mighty oceans by getting attached to the hulls of ships. ‘’It is like an underwater island with all the biota moving along with the ship,’’ explained Bella.
But with all this biota came hitherto unknown and strange predators of young native fish and eggs and also parasites, affecting local livelihood and economy.
In Israel, the strangers came in the form of stinging jellyfishes, that would ensure the sea-lovers stayed on the beach. ‘’This usually happened in the peak of summer and no one would be able to go to the sea. Besides, swarms of these jellyfishes would get into the cooling systems of coastal power plants and desalination units ending in dysfunction of machines,’’ said Bella.
While economic losses caused by marine invaders are a serious concern in many parts of the world, Bella says it is time for Kerala, with its long coastline, to sit up and start monitoring the bioinvaders. ‘’See, the problems have no cure. Prevention is the only solution and prevention is better than cure - both in the case of human health as well as that of the environment,’’ she said.
Bella’s talk at the conference hall of the Sasthra Bhavan will be specifically about the movement of marine life forms from the Western Indian Ocean through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean. The time of the talk is 2 pm.