Why are dugongs (or sea cows) dying out in Thailand?
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Hello, it's Hannah Gelbart here. Thank you for joining us for this episode of What in the World from the BBC World Service. Today we're talking about dugongs. They're these kind of like greyish sea creatures. They look a bit like dolphins or manatees and they're affectionately called sea cows. No offence to them, but it's partly because they graze on seagrass. They are incredibly cryptic and shy animals and they're

99% of your observations or your time with them are brief

three second glimpses as they come up to surface and breathe. You're going to hear more from Evan who works for African Parks later. Dugongs can be found in the seas and the oceans off the east coast of Africa and around Southeast Asia. But now more and more of them are being found dead around Thailand. So in this episode, we're going to have a look at why dugongs are dying out and what Thailand is doing to try and save them. Music

We have our guest, BBC reporter Panisa Emosha, who I'm speaking to from Bangkok. Hello. Hi, how are you? Yeah, I'm good. Thank you for coming back on the podcast. You might have heard me trying to describe what dugongs look like, but I'm sure you can do a much better job. Like, what are their main characteristics?

Well, you're doing an amazing job. But one thing, as we're coming from Thailand, I could paint a more clearer picture. It actually is a marine version of Mudeng. So baby pygmy hippo, that's become a phenomenon worldwide, not only in Thailand, but actually is a cousin to a manatee. What's different between Dukongs and a manatee is actually its

tail. The tail of Dukong is like a dolphin, a fluke-like tail, so that way it's different. So it's actually, as you mentioned, it's grey or brown and it can grow in length up to three to four metres and also it can weigh as much as 400 kilograms, so it's quite huge. I've never seen one, but have you? Is it something that people see when they're swimming or diving or snorkelling?

Yeah, unfortunately it's a very shy animal so it's not that they will like you know when see a human they will come to approach us not that friendly so maybe they like try to flee away but if you lucky you might see one.

How important are they for the ecosystem? How do they fit into the bigger picture of everything that is living in the seas around Thailand? So dugong actually play a crucial role in their ecosystem. So their feeding behavior actually help maintain the health of seagrass bed by controlling the growth of the plant. They also help spreading seagrass seed as well. So they actually are really important for the environment. It's also important to note that seagrass metals are highly effective

at capturing and storing carbon. So dugong actually helped out with the climate situation as well. Do you know how big the dugong population is around Thailand? It used to be over 200 in the past, but now with the crisis at the moment,

that in November alone, five dugongs have died. So it's become less and less. And one expert that we interviewed kind of estimate that is maybe less than 100 dugongs left in Thailand. Thailand used to have one province, it's Trang province, that is known to be the capital city of dugongs because in the past, there's so many dugongs there. But now they're less and less. And the experts say that in Trang, in that province, the capital city of dugongs,

of dugong in Thailand, less than 10 dugong are left. And we don't want to repeat what happened in 2022 when dugong become extinct in Chinese water. Do you know what's causing this? Like, why are they dying in such high numbers?

The short answer is that they're losing their food. So seagrass is their main food or if their only food. And the reduction or the reduced rate of seagrass in Thailand has been seen since 2020 with particularly more reduced in the past few years.

and researchers have been linked this with unusual sea level drop. This actually caused the seagrass to be exposed to the air and to the sun for extended periods of time and it has been sabotaging the seagrass growth. The heavy rain, the frequency also play important role as well because it can

we deal the salinity in the water, which is a condition that actually suitable from the seagrass level. But when you have more rain coming off from land to the water, that can also be a cause of problem for seagrass growth too. It sounds like a really tragic situation and something that isn't going to get better in the short term. I don't know about you, but when I watch documentaries about marine life, there are always these animals that wash up and they have like plastic bags in their bellies and stuff.

Is plastic waste also affecting the dugong population? It is for sure. Back in 2019, there is one dugong named Miriam in Thailand. She became a sweetheart of the country back then because she was found stranded. She was only six months old and she was rescued. And she was the first dugong in Thailand to be milk fed by humans. So she became like a national sweetheart. And then she was healthy. She was rescued and she was sent back

to the nature but unfortunately he was found dead and can you imagine what the cause of it? Was it plastic?

They're phlebotomic and it's like kind of cause problem with her intestine and lead to inflammation. She was found on August 17 and that day became a national dugong conservation day of Thailand from 2019. I mean, what a sad, sad story and really interesting how the whole nation got behind the story of Miriam the Milky Dugong, as I'm going to call her anyway.

is Thailand actually trying to do in terms of real action to try to save its dugong population? So at the moment, our stakeholder in Thailand trying to replant all the seagulls, that's the most important thing. So the dugong have their food back. But unfortunately, the expert told us there haven't been any

project that we could say is 100% success rate because actually planting seagrass is really hard because it takes a long time to grow and there's so many problems with climate change we mentioned with heavy rainfall or with heavy storm that could sabotage the seagrass really easily. So despite all this hardness and difficulty, the experts still emphasize on the fact that we have to keep doing it because

it might yield results in the next five to 10 years. You mentioned China, where the dugongs have all gone extinct. Is this a problem in other parts of the world too? Dugong has been on the list as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, right, and have been considered endangered since 1982. It still is. So it's not only the problem in Thailand, Australia, which is actually home to the largest dugong population in the world, also reporting that the

declining of dugong population in some area due to the same thing due to the seagrass that's like has been on the reduced rate as well

And beyond Southeast Asia, dugongs used to be found all along the eastern coast of Africa, from Somalia to Mozambique. But sightings these days are really rare. That's except for in Bazaruto National Park, which is in Mozambique. And Evan Trotzuk works in Bazaruto for the NGO African Parks and sent us this voice note about the situation there. There are a few hundred dugongs in the Bazaruto region. Considering the rest of Mozambique,

You probably have a few dozen other dugongs, and it's a similar situation in Kenya and Tanzania. There's certainly been a severe reduction in terms of their geographic distribution and in terms of the relative density in the vast majority of the dugong's East African range.

The primary reason is an increase in gill netting along the entire East African coastline in the 70s, 80s, 90s. Around the world, gill nets are the principal threat to dugongs. Gill netting is a type of netting where...

by a fisher, leaves it in the water column. So it floats there. It's incredibly simple to use, right? I can simply go out, put a net down, leave it there for 24 hours and come back and any fish that swum into this net will be captured in it.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned, because it's left there with nobody attending it, that often means that when marine megafauna swims into it, whether that's a turtle, whether that's a shark, dugong, dolphin, it can easily get entangled and then it's unable to continue breathing properly.

So together with the Mozambican government, we institute a number of conservation activities

community development, so alternative livelihoods to shift pressure from fishing, education. We also conduct aerial surveys, we conduct satellite tagging, and we do seagrass surveys. And then we also do conservation law enforcement to ensure that illegal fishing is also being managed and disrupted appropriately.

That is it for today's episode. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm Hannah Gelbart. I'm Panisa Imusha. And this is What's in the World from the BBC World Service. And if you want to hear more of our episodes about wildlife and the environment, we've done one about what is turning the world's coral white. And Panisa mentioned Mu Deng, Thailand's baby pygmy hippo that has got the world torn

talking we asked about pretty privilege you can find those episodes and all of our other episodes wherever you get your bbc podcasts we're also on youtube so once a week you can watch us chatting away in the studio come join us so you can get to know us a little bit better there as well we'll see you next time bye yoga is more than just exercise it's the spiritual practice that millions swear by

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