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Our dungi, a six-meter-long dugout canoe, chugs mechanically along the western coastline of India’s North Andaman island. Saw Atto, a veteran shrimp fisher and the captain for this voyage, turns the wooden tiller and we veer inland toward a large cove fringed with mangroves. “This is Hara Tikri,” he calls from the helm. Green Hill. “There will be bhusi jhinga here.”

He eases the dungi to a halt 20 meters from the low-tide mark and inspects the water’s depth with a halis, an oar, to ensure it’s shallow enough for him to stand. Then he jumps in, net in hand. His fishing gear consists of a fine blue mesh tied to two bamboo rods, which, when crossed, form a triangular opening—the mouth of the net. He splashes around for a bit in the waist-deep water, churning the surface as much as his thin frame allows before turning toward us—his wife, Naw Taka, and myself—grinning. “Do you see them?” he asks. I look closer. Thousands of shrimp, the length of a fingernail, dart around him, moving so quickly that their translucent bodies are a blur to the naked eye.

Fishers organize their catch in their traditional dugout canoe, called a dungi, after a day of shrimp harvesting at Hara Tikri, a site along the west coast of India’s North Andaman island. Karen people are excellent woodworkers and historically have built their own dungis using local hardwood species.

Acetes shrimp, known locally as bhusi jhinga, aggregate in nearshore waters along India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands from early September to the end of December each year. Atto and Taka are one of over 40 families from the Karen ethnic minority group that spend the four-month period living at temporary camps to harvest shrimp and prepare ngapi, a popular condiment in their native Burmese cuisine. For generations, the delicacy, made by repeatedly salting, pounding, and sun-drying shrimp, has linked them to their ancestral home in Myanmar (also known as Burma) through tradition and taste, and to their new home in India through commerce and a connection to the coastline. The question on the fishers’ minds now, though, is whether those links can endure.

It was the British, not shrimp, who originally lured the Karen from Myanmar to the Andamans, which together with the Nicobars make up an archipelago of over 500 densely forested islands to the east of mainland India. In the mid-1920s, the then-British administration recruited the Karen (among others) to clear island forests, primarily to fuel the burgeoning timber industry, in exchange for parcels of land. The Karen were historically forest-dependent people and brought with them vast knowledge of medicinal and edible plant species, animal behavior, woodworking, fishing, and hunting, and they soon settled into a lifestyle similar to the one they had left. Today, the Karen in the Andamans number close to 3,000. The majority live in Webi, the largest and oldest of eight Karen villages. They primarily fish, farm rice, and work in the area’s booming hospitality industry. And every year, a small subset leaves behind regular responsibilities to relocate to select bays along North Andaman island’s wild west coast in pursuit of Acetes.

Map data from ArcGIS

In the cove off Hara Tikri, Atto walks in lines parallel to the shore, mowing through the water with his funnel-like net. He stops periodically to lift up and check on the writhing pink mass of shrimp slowly accumulating in the net. When the mass grows to the size of a football, he waddles over to the dungi and empties the catch before proceeding on his path through the luxuriant estuarine muck. He repeats this process until the tide rises and the shrimp swarm begins to thin, and then he clambers back into the dungi for the two-hour trip back to Peghon, one of a handful of ngapi preparation camps, located roughly 10 hours by boat from Webi.

Saw Atto pushes his net through the water to catch shrimp. Mangroves and evergreen forest rise behind him, inspiring the site’s name, Hara Tikri—Green Hill.

Men and women typically work together to gather and process the shrimp. When we arrive at Peghon, Taka remains seated in the dungi and begins to sift through the catch, removing rogue pieces of organic matter and the occasional fish. Once she has gone through a bucketload of shrimp, she passes it to Atto, who empties the tiny shrimp into another fine net to filter out residual particles of sand. “This is important,” Taka tells me, as men from other families wade into the water to help Atto rinse the catch. “This is the only stage of cleaning, so we need to get out all the sand before we start making the ngapi.”

Sushma Soreng picks off any by-catch and debris that may have been pulled into the net along with the shrimp.

Preparing a single batch of ngapi takes four days. After the shrimp are washed, workers salt them and then dry them in the sun for a couple of hours. Then the ngapi makers pound the mass, salt it again (to deter flies), and leave it to hang overnight in a gunnysack so residual water drains out. They repeat the cycle of pounding, salting, and drying over three more days until the ngapi attains a peach color and has a consistency similar to that of well-kneaded dough. Once it’s ready, the workers cover the ngapi in a layer of salt a couple of centimeters thick and store it in a plastic drum for up to a month where it ferments until it’s ready for consumption. Fermentation acts as a natural preservative and contributes to the gradual development of the ngapi’s strong and distinctive umami flavor.

Saw Yaku heaves a catch of shrimp into his dungi.

Fresh Acetes shrimp in a dungi’s hold are ready to be processed into ngapi.

Ngapi dries on a platform in the sun at Photiyon, another shrimp-fishing camp along North Andaman island’s west coast. Roughly 90 percent of the Karen shrimp harvest happens along North Andaman island, and the other 10 percent occurs along the upper reaches of Middle Andaman island.

For the past three decades or more, the sale of ngapi, both in Karen villages and to wholesalers who distribute it across the Andamans and the Nicobars, has been the primary source of income for most of the families involved in making it. A kilogram of ngapi sells for close to INR 800 (US $10), and fishing families typically prepare about 300 kilograms per season. The culinary landscape of the region has been molded by the many different ethnic communities that have settled here over the years, and ngapi is now relished by many. It’s especially popular with the Nicobarese, one of two Indigenous groups from the Nicobar Islands, who, despite having access to Acetes in their own coastal waters, choose to purchase Karen-made ngapi rather than attempt to make their own. Ngapi also frequently appears on the menus of five-star restaurants on the Andamans’ touristy Havelock Island, as chefs look to feature local ingredients.

At camp—a cluster of huts woven from palm fronds and bamboo—fishers rush to collect their sun-cured ngapi from drying platforms for storage overnight. Practiced ngapi maker Saw Samoa is wistful as he lies in a hammock, tuning a vintage 1980s-era radio. “I first came to Peghon when I was 10 or 11 years old,” he says. “Dungis didn’t have engines back then. The journey from Webi would take us three days by halis [rowing].” The animated 70-year-old often has dried shrimp stuck to his face or body. When not at camp, he works in maintenance at a resort near Webi, earning about $100 a month.

The Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 permanently uplifted portions of North Andaman island, including a shrimp-harvesting bay near Chippo, the most northerly Karen settlement. A variety of black shrimp—known as tengo—that was once abundant here and found nowhere else never returned. The Karen still lament the loss of the harvesting site and ngapi made from tengo, which they attest was the most delicious.

It’s getting late, and Samoa ushers me to his quarters so he can begin preparing dinner. A torn tarpaulin, which has seen many ngapi seasons, serves as a roof. He points to his bamboo bed, which is currently being warmed by a portly chicken, and indicates that I should take a seat. The only livestock at camp, the chicken’s purpose—alarm clock or meal—is unclear. As I settle in beside it, Samoa picks up a jar from a makeshift styrofoam shelf. The jar’s contents are powdery and black. A fishy odor seeps through its closed lid. “This is the best ngapi at camp,” he says.

While the steps involved in making ngapi are broadly standardized, each family takes small liberties, during both the preparation and cooking processes, to make sure their ngapi is just right. Samoa’s family secret lies in the proportions of two different varieties of shrimp. He combines tado wa (white shrimp) and tado woh naw su (red bearded shrimp) in a ratio of three to one. This mixture has a beautiful reddish hue and a taste far superior to ngapi made from just tado wa, the most common variety of shrimp in the area. Karen fishers believe there are at least five species of bhusi jhinga, identifiable by unique physical characteristics, habitat preferences, and taste. Whether this is truly the case, or fishers encounter the same shrimp (most likely Acetes indicus) at different life stages, remains to be explored.

In recent years, fishers from outside the Karen community have taken an interest in harvesting Acetes shrimp and selling them dried at local markets.

A little time passes before Samoa presents a meal of rice, tatopa—a stew made with foraged cane shoot—and ngapi balchao, a common preparation of ngapi sautéed with crushed garlic and fresh chili. Ngapi is also often steamed with lemon and chilies, a dish called ngapi doun, and is always paired with rice. No matter the preparation, the shrimp paste is eaten in proportions similar to wasabi; I mix a little with a bite-sized portion of rice. The flavor is deeply umami, with a briny taste that fills my mouth but doesn’t overwhelm me. There’s a hint of sweetness that comes from the tiny, still-discernible bits of shrimp, balanced by a slight tanginess from the fermentation process. The savory shrimp concentrate enhances the otherwise plain meal tenfold.

Between mouthfuls, Samoa mumbles, “This is probably my last ngapi season.”

“Why?” I ask, taken aback.

“We aren’t able to catch enough shrimp anymore. It is impossible to spend four months away from home if we aren’t able to make and sell enough ngapi.”

This sentiment resonates across Peghon. Fishers who consistently prepared up to 300 kilograms of ngapi in the past have seen that number slide in recent years. This season, they have as little as 80 kilograms, the sale of which does not come close to covering their initial investment in supplies and rations, including fuel, cooking oil, sugar, and a whole lot of salt.

Historically, only the Karen and subsistence fishers from the coastal Ranchi community took an interest in the seasonal shrimp aggregations of the Andaman Islands. In recent years, however, Telugu and Bengali fishers—also settlers in the islands, originally from the Indian mainland states of Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal—have started fishing for Acetes, finding the market for dried shrimp lucrative. While the Karen fish solely with their traditional hand nets in shallow waters—which is only possible when the shrimp swarm by the shore, most likely to spawn—the new entrants locate dense balls of shrimp in deeper waters and deploy large, encircling, seine-like nets directly from their boats. They catch entire swarms of shrimp—amounting to hundreds of kilograms—in a single haul, before the shrimp have a chance to aggregate in the shallows. The fishers bring the catch to the nearest jetty in Mayabunder, where the shrimp are dried and sold in local fish markets.

Naw Nara sits beside a traditional mortar called an okhlee, routinely adding water, as her husband pounds shrimp into a paste.

At the end of the fishing season, workers pack ngapi into barrels before loading it onto dungis and shipping it to Webi for sale.

While scientists have not assessed the status of the shrimp population, the Karen are convinced Acetes are disappearing due to overexploitation. Naveen Namboothri of Dakshin Foundation, an NGO that works on sustainable-use issues in fisheries across the country, shares the concern: “The targeted extraction of highly localized and seasonal resources like Acetes shrimp makes them particularly vulnerable to overharvest,” he says. “The rapidly rising pressure on the Acetes fishery is alarming, putting it at real risk of collapse.” Namboothri feels it’s crucial that local agencies step in to protect the resource and work closely with the Karen community to safeguard their heritage. “They need to find ways to uphold customary rights or create comanagement systems that ensure the sustainable use of these shrimp—a resource which is deeply woven into Karen culture and cuisine in the Andaman Islands.”

Back home in Webi, a Karen settlement on Middle Andaman island, a family prepares one-kilogram packets of ngapi to sell locally in the village.

For the Karen, time spent at ngapi fishing camps provides a sense of place in the Andaman Islands. They have always been a community of explorers and adventurers, and many are most at home living a semi-nomadic life by the forest or sea. Traditional subsistence activities have become increasingly challenging in recent decades, as the Andaman administration imposes stricter conservation policies and restrictions on movement—through boat permits and fishing licenses—across the land- and seascapes that these people once freely roamed. Ngapi preparation remains one of the few activities that allow the Karen to revisit their traditional way of life, offering a simple but rich existence, connected to the islands’ wild spaces.

Crouched in his shelter, Samoa scoops a mouthful of rice and ngapi into his mouth, his eyes fluttering shut for a moment. I came to Peghon as an observer, interested in how ngapi-making sustains Karen culture in the Andamans. But now that I’ve spent more than three weeks witnessing the magic of how the shrimp paste is made, Samoa is ready for me to take over his legacy. With a playful grin, he quips, “Next season, this jhopdi [shelter] is yours.”