15 dramatic images of an Indian island that has slowly shrunk down to half its former size

Daesung Lee

About 90 miles south of Kolkata, India, lies an island that is slowly washing away. 

Ghoramara Island, located in the Sundarbans Delta, has seen a dramatic rise in sea levels due to climate change. A recent study by oceanographer Sugata Hazra found that 30 square miles of the Sundarbans have disappeared in the past 30 years. More than 600 families have had to relocate from Ghoramara.

Photographer Daesung Lee spent two months on the island, living side by side with those who currently reside there. "The first day I arrived, there was low tide and I saw what the coast of the island looked like. [It appeared that] it was surrounded with a rock cliff, but it was actually the eroding land of island," Lee told Business Insider.

Lee asked residents to stand on small pieces of land near the edges of the island to show the severity of the land breaking away. Below, see Lee's haunting photos, which won him third place in the Contemporary Issues category at the Sony World Photography Awards in 2013. 

Made up of 54 separate islands, the Sundarbans are one of the world's largest collection of river delta islands. They are located off the coast of southern Bangladesh and eastern India.

Ghoramara Island is in the delta area of the Sundarbans, which meets the Indian Ocean.

The warmer weather has caused glaciers to melt, which increased the sea level and made the river flow faster, causing it to slowly break down the island.