Smooth Operators: Meet Cauvery’s Elusive Apex Predator in MY OTTER DIARY
Photo courtesy: Sugandhi Gadadhar and Raghunath Belur
The team behind the documentary My Otter Diary (2025) speak about filming the enigmatic species, conflict between fisherman and wildlife, and their hopes for otter conversation
Directed by Bengaluru-based Sugandhi Gadadhar and produced by Raghunath ‘Rana’ Belur, My Otter Diary (2025) is a heartwarming documentary film about a female smooth-coated otter Maya and her family, as they navigate through a changing Cauvery River, caught between human conflict and hidden snares. The 52-minute film, co-produced by Aranya Parva Creations and Oxford Scientific Films and distributed by All3Media International, raises awareness about these apex predators which are vital to the river’s ecology.
Gadadhar remembers being fascinated with the sight of otters during her childhood family holidays to the riverside. “I saw this mirage-like thing pop up and it kept me intrigued for a long time.” That memory kept coming back to her. “It was an enigma that I wanted to find out more about,” she says.
Sugandhi Gadadhar. Photo courtesy: Sugandhi Gadadhar and Raghunath Belur
Gadadhar discovered Maya after she was introduced to a local fisherman, Shivu, who helped her navigate the river. “Shivu was introduced to us by our friend, otter biologist Nisarg Prakash. We hit it off very well with Shivu and became good friends,” says Gadadhar. “We were working along the Tungabhadra River because we did a short film on the Daroji Sloth Bear Sanctuary, which is near Hampi.” They spent quite a bit of time at the Tungabhadra Conservation Reserve to look for otters to film. It was not easy to sight them there, however, and they decided to come back to the Cauvery.
The team eventually decided to stay in a village near the riverside, instead of traveling intermittently from Bengaluru. During this time, Gadadhar attests to the patience and observation required to make a wildlife film. “We had to wake up before the crack of dawn and get to the river so that we were ready and waiting.”
Gadadhar and Belur both had a background in software engineering. “I started my journey at the Indian Space Research Organization,” Gadadhar says, adding that Belur and she met as work colleagues. “We took a sabbatical from work, and pursued wildlife filmmaking. And started doing short films for the Karnataka Forest Department as well as for NGOs, also related to wildlife and the environment. We are also freelance camera persons, and have been filming for national and international productions.”
Prakash believes that, to highlight the conservation of otters, it is important to see rivers as essential habitats. “People in general understand that forests are vital, but most rivers are seen only from the lens of being a water source or as a supply of fish or sand, but rivers are much more than that.
Otter biologist Prakash says smooth-coated otters are the largest otter species in Asia. “They are very social, which means they live in small groups, so there’s usually one dominant pair in a group and other members. The smooth-coated otter performs a similar role in the river ecosystem as tigers and lions in the forest. Otters prey on various fish, influencing the ecosystem from top down. “The Cauvery River is roughly 800 kilometres from source to sea, of which around 320 kilometres is the river flowing through Karnataka,” says Prakash. “The river in the plain is what a typical smooth-coated otter habitat would look like.”
The otters are more active during the mornings and evenings but in areas of heavy fishing, they can also be active after dark because they visit fishing nets to take fish. It is difficult to keep an otter away from a fishing net. “But in the process, fishing nets are damaged, leading to conflict between fishermen and otters. Fishermen will even go to the extent of setting up snares to kill them,” says Prakash.
The conflict between fishermen and otters is neither the fault of the otters nor the fishermen, stresses Belur. “Untreated sewage, industrial effluents, and agricultural runoffs are all causing heavy metal toxicity in the river. There are also many hydro projects coming up leading to the water stagnating, preventing fish from migrating upstream to lay their eggs,” he adds.
Prakash explains that sand mining is also a major cause of conflict. “A lot of the sand that Bengaluru consumes largely comes from the Cauvery River Basin. The way Bengaluru has grown has affected how fishermen and otters interact.” He adds that, “A stretch of river where there is heavy sand mining is made unavailable to both fishermen and otters. They are pushed into closer interaction in smaller stretches of the river, which are a little more productive in terms of fish, so fishermen need fish and otters naturally prey on fish. The declining fish catch has to satisfy both the otter and the fisherman.”
All this leads to fishermen being powerless to confront the sand mining mafia and other builders. “The fishermen can easily take it out on the otters, which is the most visible thing out there in the river for him,” says Prakash.
Fishermen also don’t receive enough support from the government in terms of subsidies and from the fisheries department. According to Prakash, the measures for improving fish catch are very weak. “The fishermen feel powerless as they think nobody is on their side,” he says.
Even though there have been many studies on otters, mostly in the form of surveys, Prakash says there is not much work to understand the behaviour of otter populations, or how these populations have been changing along the river over time, as well as their response to external pressures. “A lot of studies on otters are still in the basic stages, which is important, but nothing has been built on that,” he says.
Raghunath Belur. Photo courtesy: Sugandhi Gadadhar and Raghunath Belur.
However, he says more people are now getting interested in studying otters and river systems. “Increasingly, we are better able to understand the distribution of these otters across the country. Earlier, otters were thought to be only in protected areas, but once the study started, we now know that otters are also in the plains, and those are the areas we need to focus all our efforts on to conserve them.”
Prakash believes that, to highlight the conservation of otters, it is important to see rivers as essential habitats. “People in general understand that forests are vital, but most rivers are seen only from the lens of being a water source or as a supply of fish or sand, but rivers are much more than that. If you can see a river that is unprotected as equally important habitats, then that is one way of generating some sort of empathy towards both otters and fishermen.”
Since most rivers in the plains are unprotected, there are very few protected areas in the plains because there is so much human pressure. Prakash says that the smooth-coated otters often end up sharing their space with humans and their activities. The otters are also targeted by organized poaching gangs for their pelt, which is smuggled out of the country and used to make coats and caps. “Trade in otter pelt is not very well documented so it mostly goes under the radar,” says Prakash. A lot of poaching happens in the plains where there is hardly any protection. “It’s not a large protected area or a tiger reserve. There is no patrolling along the river looking out for otters or monitoring their populations, so it’s very easy to come in and wipe out a small population of otters without anybody noticing it. If the river flows through a tiger reserve or a wildlife sanctuary or a national park, it is afforded some protection, and that is very important because it also protects otters.”
Gadadhar notes that there have been some efforts towards conservation. “The Karnataka government has notified 34 kilometres of the Tungabhadra River as India's first otter conservation reserve,” says Gadadhar. “Recently, in the Wildlife Protection Amendment Act, 2022, smooth-coated otters and Eurasian otters are listed under Appendix 1, under which species receive the highest protection. Now, all three species of otters are Appendix 1 species.”
Elaborating further, Belur adds: “Even internationally, in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) otters are under Appendix 1. So, the government as well as the international community are focusing a lot more on otters. And we are hoping that these measures will highlight these animals.”
Prakash says moving smooth-coated otters to Appendix 1 in the Wildlife Protection Act will help enforce the law. But even so, enforcement is a problem because very few areas in the plains are protected, others mostly slip the conservation net. “There needs to be a conservation model for a river flowing through the agricultural plains of Mysuru district. It must include specific measures to protect otters, despite various pressures on the river,” says Prakash.
Gadadhar says that conservation of otters requires a sustained approach. “It needs to have different stakeholders across the table: conservationists, the fishing communities, researchers, government, and any others who are interested, so everybody needs to come together. It needs prolonged discussions, putting on our thinking hats, maybe trials and errors to try and see what can work.”
She adds that there is no one size solution. “What works in Tungabhadra may not work in Cauvery. So, there are things that need to happen, and we hope that this film can spark those conversations that can be taken forward. Even if the solution is a small one, if something happens, we'll be very grateful.”
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Sravasti Datta is an independent journalist. She has a Master's in History from Calcutta University and a diploma in broadcast journalism from the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. Her writings have been published in The Hindu, 30 Stades, Deccan Herald, The News Minute, among other publications. She can be found on Twitter: @sravastid and Instagram: @sravastid_journo.
