It’s dangerous being a dugong. You have to navigate fishers’ gill nets, dodge zipping speedboats, and constantly look out for sparse seagrass meadows.
Dugongs (Dugong dugon) are one of four living species of the order Sirenia, and the only surviving species of the Dugongidae family. The three other living members of the order Sirenia are the South American manatee (Trichechus inunguis), the West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus), and the West African manatee (Trichechus senegalensis). The dugong’s closest relative, the Steller’s sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas), was hunted to extinction in the 18th century, less than 30 years after Arctic explorers discovered it.
Local extinction
Like Steller’s sea cows, dugongs have long been sought for their meat, oil, skin, bones, and teeth. Their survival is threatened even more as they are found in shallow waters where human activity is at its maximum. Dugongs are already extinct in countries like Mauritius, the Maldives, and Cambodia. They are on the verge of extinction across most of the Indo-Pacific region. They are known to occur from East Africa to Australia, including the Red Sea, and from New Caledonia to the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
In India, dugongs are reported from the Gulf of Kutch, the Gulf of Mannar, and the Andaman and Nicobar (A & N) archipelago. As per historical records and anecdotal reports, they were once common in the Lakshadweep islands and along the east and west coast but became locally extinct in all these areas approximately 60 years ago. Unfortunately, their disappearance mainly went unnoticed, mourned only by the tiny remoras and pilot fish that feed off their parasites.
Their conservation status is unknown in 50 per cent of their distribution range, which is why the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List marks them as “Vulnerable” to extinction.
However, there is good news. Where dugongs currently occur, they have become a priority species for conservation in recent times. Multiple and diverse conservation management initiatives are being implemented at international, regional, and local levels. In the last decades, the number of articles, peer-reviewed publications, academic theses, posters, and other educational material on the aspect of their conservation has increased.
Characteristics that contribute to vulnerability
Commonly, dugongs are called “sea cows” because they graze on seagrass, although their closest relatives are elephants, not cows. Their life expectancy is 70-80 years, and they have a relatively slow reproductive rate (only one calf every 2-7 years), which is largely influenced by the availability of food. Dugongs also reach sexual maturity relatively late — between 6-17 years of age. Their gestation and breeding periods are long, and they spend most of their time alone or in pairs. Sometimes large herds of up to 100 individuals may gather in one place. These evolutionary life history characteristics increase their vulnerability.
Conservation timeline
The first major conservation impetus came in 1992 when the government gave the dugong the highest level of legal protection under Schedule I of India’s Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. Then the Zoological Survey of India began studying the status and distribution of dugongs in the Gulf of Mannar and Palk Bay. However, during the two-year study, researchers didn’t see a single live dugong. Despite this, Tamil Nadu state laudably took the lead and initiated activities related to dugong conservation; they also put the dugong on the logo of the Gulf of Mannar Park Authority.
In the same year, the A & N administration declared the dugong their state animal. In 2007, a study identified that Richie’s Archipelago, a group of islands 20 km from Great Andaman Island, had the highest number of dugongs. Interestingly, in the central government’s eleventh plan period (2007-2012), the populations of 16 land and seven aquatic species were identified as needing recovery; the dugong was the top priority species under this programme.
Species Recovery Programmes
In 2009, the Indian government advocated a Species Recovery Programme (SRP) to help species with low populations and regionally endangered status. The first to initiate the SRP for dugongs was the forest department of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. They collaborated with the Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) to study dugongs across the islands. Researchers examined the interaction between dugongs and seagrass meadows, found hotspot areas for dugongs, and estimated their population. Upon digging through 50-year-old literature and mortality records of dugongs, they found dugong numbers had reduced by 60 per cent over 20 years (1995-2015). The study’s most interesting finding was that it wasn’t just the availability of seagrass meadows that limited dugong occurrence. It suggested that other factors like entanglement in gillnets and hunting may have led to the local extinction of dugongs from locations where extensive seagrass meadows still thrive.
Parallelly between 2009-2015, other vital causes for the loss of seagrass habitat were highlighted internationally: toxic runoff, heavy marine vessel traffic, industrial development, siltation, oil spills, bottom-trawling, and dredging
Other SRPs focused on different areas: mapping seagrass habitats, identifying dugong habitats, training local communities and frontline agencies (such as the Forest Department and Fisheries Department) to monitor dugong habitats, along with massive awareness campaigns to conserve the remaining population of dugongs. In the last few years of implementation (from 2018 to 2022), committed researchers even used drone technology to monitor dugongs and conducted a massive awareness campaign under the tagline “Dugong Forever”. Local fisherfolk communities across Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Tamil Nadu and the Gulf of Kutch were also engaged at the grassroots level. Another study revealed the genetic diversity and unique lineage of Indian dugongs.
Dugong Reserve
To maintain the momentum of dugong conservation efforts, a few critical dugong habitats in the A & N Islands have been notified (in 2018) as Important Marine Mammal Areas (IMMAs) with the aim of reducing dugong poaching and catches in fishing nets. In September 2022, Tamil Nadu notified 448 square kilometres in Palk Bay, covering the coastal waters of Thanjavur and Pudukkotai districts, as India’s first dugong conservation reserve.
The journey ahead
As dugongs migrate across international boundaries, conservation organisations explore ways to cooperate across borders to share data, coordinate research, and establish protected areas. Plans are underway to establish a special dugong task force in the dugong distribution range but challenges remain.
Poverty amongst fishers remains a significant problem that can slow or even impede change. Some measures are critical to recovering their population: reducing overfishing pressures, reducing accidental entanglement of dugongs through incentive programmes, and enforcing speed restrictions on boats travelling where dugongs are common. Sustained participatory community involvement, outreach campaigns, and environmental best practices should also be upscaled throughout the coast to ensure dugong recovery. Finally, we are moving in the right direction, but given the challenges, it is going to be a long journey.
About the contributor
Vardhan Patankar
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