Salt Water, Three Boards & Fresh Herbs

Aaniyah Omardien has the Zig-Zag calendars and surfing memorabilia on her office wall that denote an I’d-rather-be-at-the-backline bent to the elusive ideal of work-life balance. But as the head of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Marine Programme, that’s a bit misleading.

She’s been instrumental in developing a strategy which aims to ensure our oceans and seashores aren’t reduced to sterile waste.

Like many journeys, Omardien’s started with a teacher who saw a spark and kindled it. “I enjoyed geography and it was always a mad rush to get your name on the list first to go on five-day hikes and weekend getaways,” she recalls. Her geography teacher noticed that the young Aaniyah was eager to get outdoors and learn what was out there. “She got me into the Wilderness Leadership Programme, then a project where we took kids from poor backgrounds on day trips up Table Mountain,” she explains.

The excursions up the mountain took youngsters out of their daily, often Dickensian surroundings and brought them up close to the Cape Floral Kingdom, the world’s smallest and richest.

It made a striking contrast, and one not lost on Omardien, who saw the need for helping people understand that nature and humankind need to coexist.

In a few years she was studying oceanography at UCT, learning not about life in the ocean, but about the way it moved, and why.

After lectures she’d often join the rest of the family at the beach for sunset picnics. “It’s important that people have space to relax in nature and also to understand a bit about how the natural world around them works. Those picnics, taking the youngsters up the mountain, the road trips we did when I was little and the holidays on the Breede River, they stay with you.”

Tertiary studies duly completed, Omardien had in mind a stint of bohemian backpacking around the world, this being a Basic Human Right For Those Completing Their Honours.

“My Dad saw a WWF ad in the paper. When you’re the oldest, you listen to your Dad. But it wasn’t a bad thing in hindsight.” The job, on the WWF’s marine programme entailed securing funding, developing legislation, and working with the proverbial stakeholders and role-players.

The term seems synonymous with people who slay vampires or sell boerewors rolls, but the interests of people who rely on the sea for a living are firmly vested and sometimes bitterly defended. Omardien started with the coastal communities, the villagers living along the shores of the Wild Coast. The mussels that grow on the rocks are a vital protein source and one that was finite.

She helped implement a programme of rehabilitating the mussels by seeding the rocks with baby ones and has helped ensure a livelihood for the villagers.

Her coup was helping to secure a sponsorship of a million Rand a year for WWF-SA’s Marine Programme, which is being used to fund a raft of projects. Not a bad feat for someone who prefers surfboards to boardrooms.

Working on WWF’s marine programme, Omardien says she’s constantly aware that while partnerships with business, government and other NGOs are important, buy-in from the basic units – families, villages and so on – is vital. “You can’t manage fish if you don’t show people how they can manage their environmental impact, help them understand how sustainable use works and how it fits together.”

Fitting together happened emotionally too, as she met and married Riyadh. “He is one of those number-obsessed actuarial consultants. He and his mates make up equations from car number plates while they’re driving,” she notes with a hint of resignation.

Riyadh introduced her to surfing, which she watched from the beach for a bit, then dabbled with, until deciding to take it seriously, heralded with a discreet thump of her fist on a cluttered desk. “Enough. I have my own board and my own car. I’m going to get on top of this thing.” And so she did, literally.

One more board: the chopping sort, on which she chops herbs for cooking, another passion, with parsley currently top of the fresh-herb pops.

Surfing and cooking aren’t bad forms of sustainable use, but there are more pressing issues. Omardien exclaims, “Look at the stats – the oceans cover 70% of the earth’s surface and they’re a life-support system for the planet, a transport route, playground and food store.

“Right now, 75% of our commercial marine species are fully or over-exploited – over-fished, in lay terms – and less than 0.5% of the ocean is within formally protected areas. More than 40% of Africa’s population makes a livelihood from coastal resources. So, if we want to survive, let alone prosper, we need to ensure there are competent custodians of those resources.

“We need to help people understand the notion of a human footprint – the impact that what we consume has on the future of the planet and its species. If we don’t, we’re going to learn about it in some unpleasant ways.”
It’s straight talk that carves through the deceptive laid-back veneer, like swells that curve prettily to the shore, but upend the unwary – ask anyone who’s felt the force of a cold wave.