Issue 133 - June 2026

SEVENSEAS Travel Magazine — No. 133 June 2026

Welcome to Issue No. 133 of SEVENSEAS Travel Magazine. Our June issue is our annual Pride issue, and this month we travel from the Gulf of Mannar’s coral reefs to a Tamil Nadu festival where thousands of Hijra women are symbolically married to a god, sit with a young photographer documenting the queer in-between spaces of the Pacific, visit a Memphis museum opening David Ụzọchukwu’s first solo show, read three new poems from Cornwall, and check in with marine mammal specialist Niru Dorrian on what equity in marine science actually looks like across two decades offshore. There is also kelp forest reporting, a Ph.D. student reading the chemical fingerprints of Jonah crabs at offshore wind sites, student art that paints the invisible ocean, a short film festival opening in three cities, and a 1,121-species jump in what we know about life in the sea.

The SEVENSEAS Mentor Network: Build Your Community

A new initiative connecting marine professionals across generations, pairing emerging conservationists with seasoned mentors to build the kind of community many wished they had at the start of their careers. [Read more]

Editor’s Letter — Coming Soon

[Placeholder — this issue’s editor’s letter from Giacomo Abrusci is forthcoming. This block will be updated when published.]

Tamil Nadu: A Land of Temples, Tides, and the Long View

A coastal journey through southeastern India, from the Gulf of Mannar’s coral reefs and dugongs to the temples of Madurai and Thanjavur, the new Pamban vertical-lift sea bridge, and the Koovagam festival. The Pride issue’s destination feature. [Read more]

The Koovagam Festival: A Celebration of Trans Identities and a Marriage to God

Mark Jeffrey Scodellaro travels to Tamil Nadu for the 18-day festival where thousands of Hijra women symbolically marry the god Aravan and are widowed the next morning. A photo essay on visibility, ritual, and the fragile sacredness that runs through reefs and cultures alike. [Read more]

David Ụzọchukwu: Bodies of Water at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art

The Nigerian-Austrian photographer’s first US solo museum show opens at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, 10 June to 27 September 2026. A look at the work and why water as identity, ancestry, and inheritance is the through-line. [Read more]

Photographing the In-Between: Benji Zecher on the Pacific’s Changing Edges

A conversation with the photographer, freediver, and researcher who documents the queer in-between spaces of the Pacific coast: the edge of a kelp forest, where the reef meets the mangroves, the winding mouths of estuaries that no map quite holds still. [Read more]

Three Poems by Andrew Searle

Three new poems from the Cornish pastoral poet — CREATIONIST, hold my hand, and Icarus Bound — on the ocean as embrace, immersion, and threshold. [Read more]

Pride in Marine Science: A Conversation with Niru Dorrian

Marine mammal specialist and UN Ocean Decade Ambassador Niru Dorrian returns to SEVENSEAS for a personal interview on visibility, allyship, and what equity in marine science actually looks like across twenty years offshore. [Read more]

The Forest We Forgot to Save: David Helvarg’s Forest of the Sea

A review of David Helvarg’s new book on kelp forests — the underwater ecosystems that almost nobody fights for and almost everybody needs. Opens with Julie Packard, on retiring from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, being asked by the Times to opine on SpongeBob. [Read more]

Tiny Organisms, Big Impact: Winners of the 2026 Science Without Borders Challenge

Nearly 900 students from 65 countries answered the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation’s 2026 brief: paint the invisible ocean. The winners turn plankton, archaea, and zooxanthellae into images worth the click on their own. [Read more]

2026 Oceanic Global Short Film Festival: New York, Los Angeles, London Premieres

Three premieres this June: New York on the 4th, Los Angeles on the 11th, London on the 22nd. Trailer and tickets live. [Read more]

1,121 New Marine Species in a Single Year: What the Ocean Census Just Found

The Ocean Census mission’s annual report lands the week of World Biodiversity Day with 1,121 new marine species named in a single year — a 54 percent jump over the prior year. On the speed problem this solves and the policy questions it sharpens. [Read more]

Wind Turbines as Reefs: A URI Ph.D. Student Reads the Chemical Fingerprints of Jonah Crabs

As lobsters retreat north and Jonah crabs take their place in Southern New England fisheries, a URI doctoral student is using shell chemistry to ask whether offshore wind turbine foundations are creating new marine life or just concentrating what was already there. [Read more]