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Loktak Lake in Manipur, India, is the largest freshwater lake in South Asia and home to the indigenous Meitei people, who have fished the lake and its curious phumdis—green circles of floating vegetation—for centuries. The naturally occurring phumdis, which are soft and spongy on top, are connected to larger subsurface layers of aquatic grass and sediments that float untethered around the 100-square-mile lake until the dry season lowers the water level so they can suck up nutrients from the lakebed. The Meitei use nets as well as woven box traps that they lower through holes cut in the phumdis in grids. A massive hydroelectric dam built in the 1980s radically changed the lake’s hydrology and biology, preventing fish from moving upstream and keeping it deep year-round. This prevents the phumdis from getting their annual nutrient fix, and many are now breaking up, leaving the Meitei with fewer places to fish each year.

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Loktak Lake in Manipur, India, is the largest freshwater lake in South Asia and home to the indigenous Meitei people, who have fished the lake and its curious phumdis—green circles of floating vegetation—for centuries. The naturally occurring phumdis, which are soft and spongy on top, are connected to larger subsurface layers of aquatic grass and sediments that float untethered around the 100-square-mile lake until the dry season lowers the water level so they can suck up nutrients from the lakebed. The Meitei use nets as well as woven box traps that they lower through holes cut in the phumdis in grids. A massive hydroelectric dam built in the 1980s radically changed the lake’s hydrology and biology, preventing fish from moving upstream and keeping it deep year-round. This prevents the phumdis from getting their annual nutrient fix, and many are now breaking up, leaving the Meitei with fewer places to fish each year.

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