by Jeremy Tager
In the days of sailing ships, when sailors could be at sea for months, even years at a time, the dugong was mistaken for a mermaid by lust-sick sailors. Even as early as Homer we hear of the dugong (order Sirena) trying to lure sailors onto the rocks with its seductive song. It is not an easy mistake to make. The dugong is not a seductive mammal. It is a slow-moving heavy herbivore with a nose shaped like a vacuum cleaner. It feeds exclusively on a variety of seagrasses primarily found in shallower inshore waters.
Dugongs, once distributed throughout the Indo-Pacific region, are now either extinct or rare over most of their original range, primarily as a result of human-induced mortality. A decade ago Australia was believed to have the largest, most stable dugong populations left in the world. This situation is rapidly changing.
In 1994 the Marsh Report indicated that dugong populations in the heavily human-populated southern half of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (over 1000 km/600 miles) had declined by 50 to 80 percent over the previous eight years. Professor Marsh further claimed that a 1 to 2 percent drop in breeding female population would lead to the extinction of the dugong in the southern half of the GBR. Under IUCN standards, the dugong was now Critically Endangered in the southern GBR. Elsewhere in the world scientists believe the dugong is doomed.
The dugong decline in the southern GBR has been attributed to gill netting, habitat loss, indigenous hunting, shark nets (used for bather protection), vessel collision, and pollution from land-based sources. Gill netting is believed to be the single greatest threat. Nets targeting fish species such as mackerel are set in dugong habitat and the dugong, which have poor vision, become entangled and drown in the nets. Net fishers frequently dispose of the body by eviscerating the buoyant intestines and tying the dead dugong to the submerged roots of mangroves in an effort to prevent its floating to the surface and being discovered.
This mortality is believed to be continuing at a rate between 6 and 10 percent, which is clearly unsustainable. In 1997 at least 23 dugong killed by nets washed up on beaches of north Queensland in a two month period. 11 dugong died during one month, September, in 1998.
The initial response of the Commonwealth Environment Minister, Senator Robert Hill, to the dugong decline was encouraging. He demanded emergency measures that would ensure not only the survival but the recovery of the dugong populations. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) recommended the creation of Dugong Protection Areas (DPAs) - like sanctuaries - in which no netting was to be allowed. Subsequently, Dr. Tony Preen, a dugong scientist at James Cook University in Townsville, was commissioned to do a report on the DPA boundaries for GBRMPA on the basis that netting would be prohibited. He recommended substantial increases in the size of the protection areas to ensure that habitats and movements of the dugong were properly accounted for. The Marine Park Authority initially endorsed that recommendation to Senator Hill.
The commercial fishing industry began to wage a massive and misleading media campaign, attacking the Marine Park Authority (calling it incompetent), the scientists (calling them biased), conservationists (calling them radical extremists), the dugong (asserting that they're not endangered), and the DPA selection process. Senator Hill quickly capitulated. He abandoned the existing process and initiated new working groups dominated by the fishing industry, alienating dugong scientists and the conservation movement. The Dugong Protection Areas (DPA) were kept, but a dual zoning system was instituted with far smaller boundaries than recommended. The prohibition on netting was abandoned in 15 of 16 DPAs. Senator Hill relied on attendance requirements for nets, convinced by the fishing industry that a single fisher within half a mile of a net could determine if a dugong was caught in a net, react, arrive, and extricate the 900-pound dugong within the 4 to 8 minutes it takes a dugong to drown. He was also convinced to allow entirely new forms of netting that pose an added threat to dugongs.
Scientists disagree with the outcome. In fact, Dr. Preen has been so vocal in his criticisms of the measures he has become a regular target of fishing industry venom and wise-use movement crackpots.
The only other measures announced by the government were a series of voluntary agreements with traditional owners that they would not hunt the dugong in the DPAs while dugong populations were in such trouble, and the removal of some of the remaining shark nets. Hunting continues in some areas. There were no measures to address boat traffic. No measures to eliminate trawling over seagrass beds. No measures to address water quality.
Since the DPAs were implemented in the middle of 1998, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has attempted to produce performance indicators to determine if the measures are working. The dismal conclusion was that there are no indicators that would tell managers that the measures aren't working until it is too late. The survival of the dugong now rests with measures that are unproven and have little prospect of being changed in the critical short term. If the Australian government cannot protect the dugong in the Great Barrier Reef region, an area far more valuable for its ecological integrity and its international appeal as a tourist destination (worth $800 million a year as opposed to the $3 million a year for the net fishery) than as a natural resource ripe for exploitation, it will certainly not be able to protect the dugong in the Gulf of Carpentaria, the Torres Strait, and Western Australia. Australia already has the highest rate of mammalian extinction in the world. This latest effort will do nothing to improve its record.
Jeremy Tager is an Australian writer and conservationist.
Going, Going, Dugong: