Dr. Mohideen WAFAR, born on the fourth of July (1949), completed his Master's degree in Marine sciences from Annamalai University, India, in 1971. The subsequent inevitable search for a renumerative position took him through a fellowship at Central Marine Fisheries Institute (1974-1976) and a Assistantship (1976-1978) at the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), India. He spent this period studying what makes the coral reefs highly productive, and later how best to fatten up the shrimps and fishes in aquaculture.
In 1978, he managed to get a French Government Scholarship for Doctoral studies in France (it was not his fault that no one else applied for the fellowship and the presence on one of his colleagues in the Interview board was only a coincidence) and later landed a fine summer day at Paris.. After visiting several labs, under the time tested excuse of knowledge-gathering, he settled down at Roscoff (pop. 5,000 in winter, 25,000 in summer) on the Atlantic coast of France. Three stormy witers and innumerable curses on board open boats later, he successfully defended his thesis "Nutrients, primary productivity and dissolved and particulate organic matter in the well-mixed waters of the western English Channel" submitted to the University of Paris VI.
On return to NIO (where else?) in 1982, he shared his time between coral reefs and nitrogen cycles in the marine environment, and even managed to marry them together as a Govt-funded project on "Nitrogen flux in a coral reef ecosystem". over the next ten years, he successfully built up a reputation as the only coral reef expert and as the only nitrogen expert in India (auto-publicity did help a bit). Even the UNESCO was convinced of this that they supported his participation in three successive International Coral Reef Symposia. This time was also spent usefully in lengthening his bio-data (more papers published, international and national seminars and symposia attended, membership in several committees, invited lectures and so on ).
In 1992, he took a long leave of absence from NIO and returned to Fance, this time to work on chemical tracers for circulation of water masses in the equatorial and south Atlantic Ocean, under the WOCE program. In 1995 he returned to NIO (no other place to go!): since then, he is trying to study again nitrogen recycling, this time in mangrove environments, and coastal and marine biodiversity (pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow!).
He has 55 papers to his credit till now and some more are in various stages of processing. He can teach marine science students various topics in biological and chemical oceanography. He has good stamina for field and ship-board work. Also a reasonably good style of drafting reports and scientific papers. He is quite fluent in French : he can teach marine science even in French!