Young shark enthusiast overcomes health challenges to inspire conservation

Some kids collect stickers. Others collect cricket cards. Eleven-year-old Mahadevan “Mahi” Nottath collects shark facts, and can reel them off faster than most adults can name the days of the week.

Mahi isn’t just your average marine-life enthusiast. Born with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS), a severe congenital heart condition, he’s undergone three open-heart surgeries and lives with a pacemaker. But if you think that’s slowed him down, his answers about sharks suggest otherwise, packed with facts about the flexible skeleton of a hammerhead or the smooth swimming style of a great white.

“I love sharks, and the things that fascinate me are their amazing swimming skills and flexible skeleton,” he says. “It just began automatically for some reason. Before, I used to like animals such as lions and tigers and elephants.”

That fascination now lives on his Instagram handle, @sharkboymahi, where he creates short, unscripted videos introducing followers to different species. “I have to figure out which shark I’m gonna talk about today,” he says. “I hope my content will encourage people to protect and conserve sharks.”

His parents, Nishanth and Ramya, have watched this obsession evolve. Both are chartered accountants and have learned to balance work, hospital visits, and Mahi’s ever-expanding world of sharks. “Mahi’s passion for animals started at a very young age,” says Ramya. “At two, he was so crazy about elephants that we used to play Colonel Hathi’s March from The Jungle Book even when he was recovering from surgery. He had over 200 elephant figurines before switching to dinosaurs, which he still loves, and then fell madly in love with sharks.”

That passion has boosted his confidence at school. “He always finds a shark twist to anything he does,” Nishanth says. “If there’s a creative project, he’ll weave in shark facts or stories. His friends know they have a true shark specialist around and they learn from him.”

The learning never stops. When Nishanth installed ChatGPT on Mahi’s iPad to supervise through his own account, he was floored by what happened next: “Within days, he was having deep conversations with AI, building quizzes about sharks, and even attempting to create a game with rules, standards, and branding.”

Family holidays now revolve around coastlines. Mahi has snorkelled with sharks in the Maldives and Seychelles. Diving is on the cards as soon as he’s old enough to train. His dream list is pure adrenaline: cage diving with Carcharodon carcharias (great white shark) and swimming off the Bahamas alongside Galeocerdo cuvier (tiger shark) and Sphyrna mokarran (great hammerhead shark).

Ask him how he keeps going despite his health challenges, and the answer is simple. “My family and friends help me to find the strength,” he says. “I stay enthusiastic by recalling facts about sharks every day and learning about the world, from the crystal blue seas to the lush green jungles.”

Earlier this year, Yas SeaWorld Abu Dhabi spotted his work and invited him for a special behind-the-scenes tour and interview. It became, as his parents put it, “literally the best day of his summer holidays.” Mahi spent hours with an expert guide, deep in shark talk. It was also the family’s first professional interview together, a chance for Mahi to hear his parents’ take on his journey.

When he’s not swimming, researching, or making videos, Mahi’s at the piano, a hobby he picked up purely to play the Jaws theme. He’s now working towards his first Trinity exam. At school, his Year 5 report card described his outcomes as “exceeding expectations” in all major subjects and his efforts as “exemplary.” He’s preparing for his CAT4 exams in September, aiming for a top school when he starts Year 7 in 2026.

That same year, doctors will replace his pacemaker battery, just another hurdle in a life already marked by determination. Until then, Mahi has sharks to learn about, music to master, and dreams to chase.