Mahabaleshwar Hegde was the Research Head at the Environmental Justice Program for Karnataka. He is involved in training coastal villages to conduct community surveys on the coastline and works towards the implementation of research findings, government schemes and environmental laws along the coast of Uttara Kannada.
He holds a Masters Degree in Marine Biology from Karnataka University, during which he worked on primary productivity and plankton community of the Karwar coast. Since then, he has developed a close association with fishermen and coastal issues of the Uttara Kannada coast. In 2009 he received a University Grant Commission research fellowship to conduct research on coastal and demersal fisheries and ecology. He holds a PhD from Goa University.
