UWM Project Manager · Shorewalk Expert · Senior Member
Specialty: Marine Life · Estuaries · Mangroves · Wetlands
Chahat Yadav grew up in Mumbai never imagining the bustling city had room for wild nature — until a single shore walk at Juhu Beach changed everything. Amazed to discover that marine life quietly thrived amid the chaos, she began exploring the shores on her own. The moment it all sealed for her came when she stumbled upon a bamboo shark washed up on the beach. She couldn’t believe she was looking at a shark, right here in Mumbai. That day, she knew she belonged by the sea.
Chahat Yadav’s Fieldwork & Marine Encounters
A postgraduate in Zoology (Oceanography & Fishery Science) from Mumbai University, Chahat has spent over five years coming to know the city’s intertidal and wetland ecosystems intimately. With 3,000+ hours in the field, her encounters read like a coastal treasure log: spotting Mumbai’s endemic Bombay dorid — a sea slug found nowhere else in the world — on the shores of Haji Ali, watching an Arabian carpetshark wash up at Girgaon, and coming face to face with lionfish and stonefish while working in the Havelock Islands.
Conservation Leadership & Philosophy
Today she directs Naturalist Explorers’ flagship collaboration with United Way Mumbai, delivering mangrove and shore walks to over a thousand citizens, and has planned and led dozens of coastal conservation programs, flamingo surveys at Thane Creek, microplastic assessments and school nature-trail programs. Her training runs deep too — a BNHS Marine Biology course and a leadership program in biodiversity conservation back up years of hands-on fieldwork.
Her teaching philosophy is refreshingly simple: talk about nature, in nature. She’ll ask participants what they can spot, turn a tidepool into a game of hide-and-seek, and let people feel the texture of an empty seashell or watch the quirky standoffs between hermit crabs. Notice the smaller things, she says, and you start to feel part of something much bigger.
“Noticing the smaller things around you, and how they interact with the same environment you’re in, makes you feel part of something big.”
