the lockdown improved the quality of water in lakes and rivers but not much is known about how it impacted coastal watersin the session on beaches and coastal erosion at the green cities blue planet virtual conclave on environment and biodiversity m v ramana murthy director national centre for coastal research said a team of researchers are sailing across the east coast to collect data on coastal pollution from vishakapatnam in andhra pradesh to paradip in orissathe ongoing cruise has already seen some preliminary results in north andhra region where there are pharmaceutical industries we didnt find much sewage load as they were closed due to the lockdown marina beach is different as three river inlets bring in lot of domestic sewage we hope to get data that can become a baseline to help control pollution in the future he saidelaborating on the impact of climate change on coastal erosion and the efforts by iit madras to tackle it profesor s a sannasiraj from the department of ocean engineering said they along with central water commission have set up coastal stations to collect longterm field measurements for coastal management both accretion and erosion have its pros and cons when it comes to erosion we have solutions like seawall groyne fields and offshore dikes but our solutions need to be sitespecific he said while erosion has been one of the reasons for the displacement of the coastal community naveen namboothri director dakshin foundation said the lockdown followed by the annual fishing ban has also affected the livelihood of the fishermenfishermen who migrated were stuck either in their boats or in harbours the fish market linkage was also broken it will take a couple of months for everything to get back on track and export markets too have to open but this has also given an opportunity to think about our over dependence on the export market he said the second session focused on ways that tourism and conservation can go hand in hand coronavirus has returned nature to the earth said steve borgia chairman and managing director of indeco leisure hotels it has also made delhi air pure venice wasters blue and brought sparrows to my terrace said borgiasriharan balan managing director of madura travel service said that for the first time the world is giving sustainability its due he believed ecotourism will be the future but the government needs to be more stringent in terms of allowing only licensed tour operators to functionthere is no representation for ecotourism operators in the government even today said borgia adding that lessons on conservation can be learned from kumbakonam which has cleaned itself up airconditioned bus stands waste segregation recycling if this one tourist spot can do it why not the others there are several spots that have degenerated because of a lack of awareness we have destroyed kodaikanal and ooty today the only pristine part of the country is perhaps the northeast because it is still underdiscovered said borgia the key said