Protecting dugongs helps fight climate change – 8/10/2023 – Environment

The government of the state of Tamil Nadu, in southern India, last year announced the country’s first conservation unit for the dugong. Located in the Palk Bay area, on the Gulf of Mannar, the reserve not only aims to protect the mammal against illegal hunting and overfishing practices, but can also help protect the coastline from the impacts of climate change.

Dugongs, the only herbivorous marine mammal in the world, are classified as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Their decline could have wider consequences and pose a threat to the fragile ecosystem that depends on them. “Dugongs feed exclusively on seagrass, and the two have a mutually dependent relationship,” said Rukmini Shekar, who worked on projects at the Wildlife Institute of India.

“The dugong keeps the seagrass neatly trimmed,” she said, which helps the grass regenerate and prevents algae growth. “And that also helps the dugong, because it prefers foods that are high in nitrogen and low in fiber.”

Seagrass, a marine plant that grows in shallow water, is extremely beneficial for coastlines. It produces oxygen and cleans coastal waters, and protects against sea level rise and natural disasters by absorbing wave energy.

Relationship between seagrass and climate change

Research suggests that seagrass can play an important role in mitigating climate change, capturing carbon from the atmosphere 35 times faster than rainforests.

Despite this, seagrass meadows around the world are being lost at a rate of around 7% per year, mainly due to human activity and warmer ocean temperatures.

By focusing on dugong conservation, the new reserve in Tamil Nadu could present a solution, Shekar said, facilitating the regeneration of seagrass as well as the ecosystem that this habitat supports.

The Gulf of Mannar is a paradise of marine biodiversity, home to several species of sea turtles, fish, molluscs and crustaceans.

By protecting the dugongs, “all species that share the same habitat also have a better environment to grow in,” said Shekhar Kumar Niraj, who was the Tamil Nadu government’s forest conservator when the reserve was announced last year. “It’s kind of an umbrella effect.”

The habitat also acts as a juvenile nursery for many commercially important fish, sustaining the livelihoods of local traditional fishermen in the Palk Bay area. Recently, high market demand has driven commercial fishing trawlers into the area, threatening both the fragile ecosystem and the livelihoods that depend on it.

The trawls have weights on the bottom and floats on the top to maximize catch areas, which can result in overfishing and damage to seagrass beds, Shekar said. “When they pull, they literally bring everything up.”

Overfishing and poaching cause problems

Murugesan, a local fisherman, said that a species of fish he used to catch has been completely wiped out because of trawling. “You can’t catch any of those fish now because there’s less seagrass.”

Fishing can also be harmful to dugongs if they accidentally become entangled in nets. According to Shekar, dugongs need to come to the surface to breathe much more frequently than other marine mammals, coming up every three to eight minutes.

“When they get caught in nets, they can’t come up for air. So even a gap of about 20 to 30 minutes is fatal,” he said.

Illegal hunting is also a problem. Dugong meat is considered a delicacy, which means that fishermen sometimes choose to sell the dugongs that get caught in their nets rather than release them, despite this being illegal.

In early 2020, Murugesan’s son was out fishing when a dugong got caught in his net. “Usually people bring it [para a praia], because it is possible to sell it”, he said. “But I always say that they should let them go. Because it’s against the law.”

Murugesan said dugong meat can sell for 300 to 400 rupees per kilogram, meaning that an adult dugong can earn more than 100 times more than what a fisherman would normally earn in a day.

Shekar’s colleagues at the Wildlife Institute of India are working with local residents to raise awareness of anti-poaching laws, as well as trying to broaden their involvement with conservation efforts. They offer financial incentives to fishermen who release trapped dugongs back into the water.

Murugesan’s son eventually freed the dugong and received compensation of 10,000 rupees, which was divided equally among the crew members.

Community involvement

The new reserve aims to further increase community engagement with conservation efforts by positioning local fishermen as stakeholders through a “collaborative management system,” Niraj said.

She will also promote small-scale traditional methods, ensuring that “fisheries remain sustainable and conservation-friendly.”

“There will be more awareness, they will be more skilled in carrying out their activities and, at the same time, they will be able to dedicate their efforts to conservation”, he emphasized.

Niraj hopes the lessons learned here will be transferable, providing a model for other coastal conservation programs across India and helping to contribute to the country’s global climate pledges, such as the Global Biodiversity Framework, which aims to protect at least 30% of the world’s coastlines through effective conservation and management.

“If we make it [implementar as metas da reserva] successful and sustaining it over the long term, it will make an enormous contribution to climate mitigation narratives,” concluded Niraj.