Saving Dugongs From Extinction

Some documentaries shout their message. This one about Dugongs stays quiet, almost hesitant while addressing its purpose immediately with a sense of desperateness… The film starts with introducing a Dugong parallel to the threat they’re facing for their survival. Watched closely by fishermen who shared the water with Dugongs for years can feel the signs. The animal is weak, drifting slowly, struggling to stay oriented. It’s how extinction begins with quiet presence in the wrong place without any dramatic alert. Their source of survival is the same seagrass beds that we, by trawling, pollution, or coastal construction (digging up the seabed to create channels or harbors) continue to destroy. From the first few minutes, the documentary makes it clear that it is made for sheer responsibility of spreading awareness.

What stands out is the choice to center fishermen and not scientists or officials as the first line of care working with limited resources to contribute to making a difference in the world. These are people who depend on sea for a living, yet they pause their work to protect a creature that brings them no obvious benefit. The fishermen don’t announce that Dugongs are vulnerable to extinction and so the documentary never turns this into a moral headline. Their efforts gently prove that to make a difference, you don’t need a well-equipped setup or a resourceful platform; sincere efforts and genuine care would suffice.

Facts About sea Cows

• Why called sea cows? Dugongs are affectionately called “sea cows” because they’re strict herbivores and their diet consists primarily of seagrass, they use their large, muscular, downward-angled snout to efficiently graze along the bottom, uprooting the entire plant, similar to how a land cow grazes on pasture grass. Dugongs need around 30 kg of seagrass per day. And by grazing, Dugongs maintain healthy seagrass beds across the sea that are habitats for small fishes, prevents erosion, and also store carbon. If dugongs disappear, these underwater meadows would decline too.
• Where they’re extinct and where they remain: In China, Dugongs are considered “functionally extinct” because since 2008, there have been no verified sightings of their presence around Chinese coastal waters. While in other areas they still survive, especially where large, relatively intact seagrass habitats exist such as parts of Australia and some islands in the Pacific/Indo-Pacific, and other coastal regions.
• How the Rescue Unfolds: Dugongs are highly sensitive to stress; therefore, the rescue effort has to be slow. The fishermen avoid panic around them while trying to provide them with artificial seagrass beds to survive on. Any shock or physiological stress can kill them faster than a wound. So, everyone moves carefully around them.

The documentary requests our attention towards a species fighting for its existence while still giving us space to rethink coastal developments, fishing practices, and steps to minimize water pollution. In a time when extinction is often treated as distant or inevitable, such a documentary might urge its viewers to take action before these beautiful sea cows turn into the next “dinosaurs” for this living world. It gently raises a difficult question for its viewers: If reversing the damage changes so little, what does it say about the dangers that are yet to be discovered and we stand as responsible for the damage or as a rescuer?

Sometimes the most effective stories aren’t the loudest ones. They’re the ones that trust you to look and keep looking even when the screen has gone dark.

View the entire thought-provoking documentary on myco with a simple click!

For more stories that look beneath the surface, feel free to wander through our other blogs on myco.