Extinction looming for dugong
MERSING: “I need to get hold of some ice cubes, gloves and a container to keep specimen samples,” blurted out marine mammal conservationist Ng Jol Ern, just after lunch.
Ice cubes? Gloves? Specimen? Why would she want all that, wondered this writer, who had accompanied Ng and her team from MareCet (a marine life conservation non-governmental organisation), as well as a group of Universiti Putra Malaysia students, to meet some kampung folk in Mersing as part of a dugong research project early last year.
Quickly clearing up the writer’s confusion, Ng explained that she had received a phone call from a colleague in Kuala Lumpur informing her that a dugong’s carcass had been spotted on a remote beach in Johor. And, there were express orders for her to take some specimen sample to Kuala Lumpur for research purposes.
“So, now we will have to go look for that beach,” said Ng, who is MareCet honorary secretary. That meant making a detour to Felda Tenggaroh Selatan Satu in Kota Tinggi district, where the beach was located.
It took more than an hour to get to the Felda settlement from Mersing town and this writer could not wait to get there because she had not anticipated seeing a dugong, albeit a dead one, with her own eyes when setting off on this trip.
Finding the beach -- Pantai Tanjung Logok -- where the carcass lay turned out to be a challenge. We looked around but all we saw were acres and acres of oil palm trees and none of us had the slightest inkling of where the route to the beach was. Fortunately, one of the Felda settlers there, Anang Minhad, 59, came to our rescue.
“Only the kampung folk here know of this route to Pantai Tanjung Logok,” Anang said. From where our van was parked, we had to take a 15-minute walk on hilly terrain to get to the carcass on the beach.
This father-of-two said he stumbled upon the dugong carcass whilst fishing at the coast there.
“I was shocked to see it... although I’ve been living here since 1989, it was the first time I saw a dugong,” he said, as he guided us to the carcass.
It was a pitiful sight to see the endangered sea mammal in that state. As, observed by Ng, some monitor lizards had been in a feeding frenzy as the skin had been peeled off in some parts of the carcass and its head disfigured.
As dusk was approaching, Ng quickly got down to the task of collecting some samples of the dead dugong’s skin. Suddenly, rain clouds gathered and it started to drizzle. Anang herded us to another route through a nearby jungle to get to our van, informing us that the canopy would prevent us from getting soaked.
“We better leave now... look, the tide is starting to rise and the waves are getting stronger. If we are late, we might drown,” he joked. As we traipsed along the uneven jungle path, Anang pointed out to some animal tracks.
Obviously in a jocular mood, he quipped, “Be careful, a lot of wild boar around here... and these are fresh tracks!”
Earlier at the beach, several staff from the state Fisheries Department were also present as dugongs are a protected species under Section 27 Part Five of the Fisheries Act 1985. This particular section relates to aquatic mammals or turtles in Malaysian fisheries waters.
Dugongs are also protected under the Fisheries (Control of Endangered Fish Species) Regulations 1999, that was amended in 2008; the Protection of Wildlife Act 1972, which is applicable to Peninsular Malaysia; Wildlife Protection Ordinance 1998 (Sarawak); and Wildlife Conservation Enactment 1997 (Sabah).
These laws prohibit any persons from catching, disturbing, killing, owning, selling or buying dugongs or any of their body parts. Live dugongs caught accidentally by fishermen are required to be released into the sea immediately, whilst sightings of dead dugongs have to be reported to the Department of Fisheries Malaysia (DOF).
There have been many cases of dead dugongs being swept up on Malaysian shores ever since the first live dugong was sighted by a villager during the late 60s. Research carried out by the relevant government agencies, local universities and NGOs has shown that the number of dugongs in Malaysian waters has been dwindling over the years.
“We don’t have them in the hundreds anymore,” said DOF Turtle and Marine Endangered Species Research division director Syed Abdullah Syed Abdul Kadir. He told Bernama the dugong population in the waters off Johor was estimated at 40 to 50, while Sabah and Sarawak have only 20 to 30 of these sea mammals.
“In view of the fact that three to five dugongs are found dead every year, our dugong population is facing the threat of extinction,” he added.
The figures are alarming and, indeed, a cause for concern for the government and marine life conservationists.
It is understood that Australia’s dugong population of 80,000 is the biggest in the world, with most of them found in the northern waters of the continent between Shark Bay (Western Australia) and Moreton Bay (Queensland).
Malaysia’s dugongs are mainly found in Sungai Pulai and Sungai Johor, as well as the waters off Mersing, Pulau Sibu, Pulau Tinggi, Pulau Besar, Pulau Tengah, Pulau Seribuat and Pulau Rawa, all in Johor. In Sabah, they can be found in Sandakan Bay and the waters off Pulau Tambisan, Pulau Penyu, Pulau Gaya, Pulau Manukan and Pulau Bangi. In Sarawak, dugongs have been spotted off the waters of Kuala Lawas and in Brunei Bay.
The presence of dense seagrass beds or meadows in the seas off Johore, Sabah and Sarawak make these areas ideal habitats for dugongs, which are also referred to as sea cows due to their tendency to “graze” on seagrass, a type of marine plant resembling grass.
MareCet founder and chairman Dr Louisa Ponnampalam said dugongs were an endangered species mainly because they could only survive in specific areas with a bountiful seagrass ecosystem.
“Unlike whales or dolphins which eat fish, prawns and other marine life found in abundance in the sea, dugongs mainly eat seagrass,” said Louisa, who is also fellow researcher at Universiti Malaya’s Institute of Ocean and Earth Sciences. An adult dugong, it is said, can eat up to 50 kilogrammes of seagrass a day.
However, these docile and strictly-herbivore mammals, which can grow up to three metres long and weigh as much as 450 kg, only eat certain types of seagrass.
Beting Tengah in Penang, for instance, is known to have substantial seagrass beds but no dugongs have been spotted there. According to Louisa, their favourite seagrass species were of the Halophila ovalis and Halodule uninervis genera.
“These particular species are rich in nitrogen, have low fibre content and can be easily digested,” she explained.
Dugongs are usually found in coastal waters, particularly in wide shallow protected bays and mangrove channels. Unfortunately, due to the proximity of their habitats to the coastline, the areas’ seagrass ecosystem is at risk of being destroyed, no thanks to pollution, land reclamation activities, rapid development and trawling.
The destruction of their habitats might very well sound the death knell for this marine mammal, as research has indicated that the dugong population’s downward trend correlated with damaged seagrass habitats, said Louisa.
She added that since dugongs have to come to the water surface every 10 minutes to breathe, they faced the risk of drowning should they get entangled in drift nets placed by fishermen.
“They need to come to the surface to breathe as they are mammmals and breathe through their lungs. They will surely drown if they get caught in one of those fishing nets,” she said.