Ep#32 Heart of Conservation Podcast Show Notes (Edited)

00:00

Audio: Collared owlet 

00:09

Hi I’m Lalitha Krishnan and you’re listening to episode #32 of Heart of Conservation. You can listen to Heart of Conservation on several platforms but you can also always read the transcript right here, on my blog Earthy Matters. Today we are going to be talking about an animal that is an old relative of the elephant but it lives in water. I’m talking about the Dugong spelt ‘Dugong’. It’s also a cousin of the manatee. The dugong is a marine mammal that once lived in large numbers in Indian coastal waters and yet we know very little about it.

I am very excited to be speaking to not one but three amazing researchers Prachi Sachchidanand Hatkar, Chinmaya Ghanekar and Swapnali Gole about their work with Dugongs and their habitats.

Prachi Sachchidanand Hatkar is a PhD Scholar, Project Fellow- CAMPA Recovery of Dugongs and their habitats in India at WII. Currently, she is working on seagrass-associated fauna in the gulf of Kutch and Gujarat. Chinmaya is a wildlife biologist and certified scuba diver. She is currently working on projects involving seagrass, fish, dugongs and their threats under ‘CAMPA Recovery of Dugongs and their habitats in India.’ She is pursuing a Ph.D. in seagrass-associated fish and works in the Gulf of Mannar and Palk Bay region.

Swapnali Gole is a marine researcher and a National Geographic Explorer. Affiliated with WII, she has been working on the insular population of dugongs in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India, for the last seven years.  Between the three of them they have all the dugong habitats of India covered, I think. 

A special thank you to Dr Dr. J. A.Johnson, Scientist and faculty at Wildlife Institute of India and also Head of Department of Habitat Ecology for facilitating this conversation. And for the lovely ladies on my screen, welcome and thank you all for joining me.

2:14

Lalitha Krishnan: Swapnali do you want to start with what are dugongs? 

2:18

Swapnali Gole: When I start introducing dugongs, what I have experienced is that there is a big question mark on everybody’s face. “Do you want to say ‘Dolphin’? Are you talking about some whale species?” Generally, we are always bombarded or greeted with these kinds of reactions. Dugong is a very simple elusive animal which is a marine mammal species. A marine mammal is an animal that lives its life in the sea–of course there are variations–there are some marine mammals that live partly in the sea and partly on land but dugongs are exclusively marine mammals which means right from when they are born to the time they die, they spend their entire life cycle in the sea. And, they are just like dolphins and whales; also, marine mammals.  But they are more popularly known compared to dugongs. 

Dugongs are also more popularly known as sea cows; the reason being the dugong is the only exclusively herbivorous marine mammal. Which means the only diet a dugong prefers is a vegetarian diet in layman’s language. And, they are generally found in around 42 countries in the world globally in the Indo-Pacific belt out of which in India we have only three distribution sites i.e., Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Andaman and Nicobar Islands. So, people must remember the dugong as animals that live in the sea, they give birth to animals–they do not lay eggs like some other marine species and there is strong parental care in dugongs. From the time the calf is born, the calf will be strongly dependent on its mother for one to two years. These dugong mothers nurse their babies which is why they fall in the category of marine mammals. Marine means related to the sea and mammals mean animals that give birth to the calf and not lay eggs.

4:23

Lalitha Krishnan: That is so interesting. There is so much we do not know. How long have you three been researching dugongs and how extensive is the area you work in in these three different parts of India? 

4:39

Prachi Hatkar: I have been working in the Gulf of Kutch for five years now. The Gulf of Kutch is situated between the Saurashtra and the Kutch peninsula so the coastline of the Gulf of Kutch is about 170 km long. It starts from the Okha to the inner gulf and the mouth is about 75 km wide at the mount and the water spreads around 7300 square kms across the Gulf of Kutch. So, the Gulf of Kutch is a Marine National Park and marine sanctuary which was established in 1995. It was the first Indian marine sanctuary which was declared and it has 42 islands which covers various habitats like the grasses, corals, mangroves and intertidal zones etc. 

5:32

Lalitha Krishnan: What about you Chinmaya?

5:34

Chinmaya Ghanekar: So, like Prachi, I have also been working in Tamil Nadu – in the Gulf of Mannar and Palk Bay. These are two regions of separate seas.  One comes in Bay of Bengal which is Palk Bay and one is part of the Indian Ocean which is the Gulf of Mannar, so we kind of work at the confluence of both.  The area, to describe it, is a long, long stretch of Indian coastline – around 500 kilometres. So, from Adirampattinam if you consider till Kanyakumari it is approximately 500 km of the shore line.  And then the sea extends…in Palk Bay it extends to Sri Lanka but because of international borders we cannot access that area. But we generally restrict our area to 10 to 12 kilometres of coast. So, it is around 5000 square kilometres we cover for our study for dugongs and sea grasses and other fauna, and other factors of the project. To tell you about Park Bay, it is a very closed sea; it is like if you see Palk Bay – like I saw Palk Bay for the first time. I thought it was a lake.  It is very calm and has very glass like water most of the time but Gulf of Mannar on the opposite hand has waves and islands. These are two completely different areas so you working in both of them is pretty different from each other. Palk bay has a lot of sea grasses. Gulf of Mannar has corals, sea grasses, algae beds, rocky patches, habitat diversity so to say.  We can encompass most things of marine habitats in both areas.

7:28 

Lalitha Krishnan: Amazing. It also means that the dugong likes both habitats.

7:33

Chinmaya Ghanekar: They definitely do.

7:34

Lalitha Krishnan: Interesting. Swapnali?

7:37

Swapnali Gole: I have been working in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands studying dugongs for more than seven years now. Our study site if you see…because it is an insular set-up, it adds up to the work of our team. Because, the entire stretch is around 1962 kms, right from the northernmost island……..  till Great Nicobar it is 1962 kms. And, we have more than 800 islands, 836 to be precise. Then on each island there is a coast because it is an island, hence, we have more study areas I would say. For every island there are four coasts. And, what we have been doing is working in patches because it is not possible-considering the manpower that we have-to be present everywhere. So, we started our survey with say, the north……Andaman covered that and slowly came to the southern side. And, very recently we covered the Nicobar groups of islands. Practically the entire Andaman and Nicobar is our study area.

8:48

Laitha Krishnan: Sounds like a lifetime of work.

8:50

Swapnali Gole: It was. It took us six years to do what we did and it was very intensive.

8:57

Lalitha Krishnan:  When you say ‘team’ wherever you are, what size teams are you talking about?

9:05

Swapnali Gole: For the islands we never had a team of more than three. There was always a lot to do. I do not know why but we always had the smallest team…two or three people. For the seagrass and dugong (study) especially, the maximum I remember we had was a team of four, never more than that. 

9:27

Chinmaya Ghanekar: I have been fortunate enough to work with a team of eight people on a boat working on different aspects of the project and then we work together and it’s amazing.  But then sometimes we are just two people who are going by an auto to a coast then doing our surveys and coming back so there is variation across the years. 

9:52

Lalitha Krishnan: Prachi, I am going to ask you this question just to know more about the dugong. If a Dugong were a person, how would you describe it? 

10:03

Prachi Hatkar: I would like to describe the dugong as a gentle giant.  We have heard stories that describe the Dugong. If you see dugongs, they look similar to somewhat like a pig you can say, or mermaids… the stories we have been hearing about sailors saying, “We have been seeing mermaids in the sea”, they weren’t mermaids, they were actually seeing dugongs but perceiving them as mermaids. 

10:32

Lalitha Krishnan: Where do these stories come from?

10:36

Swapnali Gole: It was given by Christopher Columbus. In his excerpts—while he was voyaging around the West-Indies side–he wrote that, “I happened to see three mermaids today but they are not as beautiful as they have been described.” Honestly speaking, dugongs do not look like mermaids (or what we think we know of them). Only the tail resembles the mermaid but also later it was detected that maybe he did not see dugongs but manatees which are sisters of dugongs.

11:10

Lalitha Krishna: Right. Chinmaya, where can we find dugongs? In India of course, we now know but where in the rest of the world?

11:19

Chinmaya Ghanekar: So, in India as we have already mentioned it is in Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Andaman Nicobar. So, these three areas are like pockets. If you see the map, it is like one pocket on the left-hand side of the map, one on the south and one on the right-hand side. So, we call this a pocket distribution of dugongs.  

But in the world scenario, we have the greatest number of dugongs as of now in Australia. So, after that, we have this population in Red Sea, so that is also kind of pockets so these mostly as distributed in Indo-Pacific region; very technically saying and they are present in some island countries like Philippines, Indonesia…Southeast Asian countries. They are also there in our neighbouring countries like Sri Lanka. So, they extend from the Indian ocean to the Pacific Ocean completely. But China had dugongs a few years ago and very sadly they have now declared them as functionally extinct so the population cannot grow basically any more. They do not have dugongs anymore which is kind of sad news but we should be alarmed that populations in other countries also are quite threatened. We should look at them and give them the importance they deserve.

12:51

Lalitha Krishnan: True. Swapnali, talking of habitats where do dugongs prefer to live? Tell us a bit about their biology. How long they live, up to what size they grow etc. I know you call them gentle giants but exactly how big are they?

13:15

Swapnali Gole:  Dugongs spend considerable time in the day-I am not talking of their whole night -in shallow waters. So, it is directly linked to the sea grasses that they feed upon. And seagrasses being true plants they need sunlight just like any other plant on land for creating their own energy i.e. their photosynthesis process. So, wherever light reaches the water – and this is a very local concept. In the Andamans for example, the water is very clear so it (sunlight) is going to reach much deeper there compared to Gujarat for example where the water is very turbid. So, depending on how deep the sunlight reaches, it decides on where sea grasses will be found and that automatically regulates where dugongs will be found. It is all very linked. And, because dugongs primarily feed on seagrasses, wherever their food is, their distribution is going to be centred around those areas the most and that differs from place to place. That being one. Also, there have been tagging experiments done in Australia where it has been scientifically proven that more than 70- 80% of time of a day, dugongs have been found in shallow/sheltered waters 1 metre to 5 metres because they were spending a lot of time just feeding on seagrasses. On a similar line, dugongs, as I said, feed on seagrasses. An adult dugong will eat up to, say, 35-40 kgs of sea grasses, that is a lot of seagrasses for an individual. And, when l say, ‘adult dugong’ it goes up to 3.5 to 4 metres. So, the gentle giant’s size limit is 4 metres. Dugongs are generally not recorded to grow more than that. I have never heard of dugongs growing to say, 7-8 metres. Generally, people mistake dugongs for other species. There has been misidentification in my experience also. My informant spotted a whale and thought it was a dugong. He said it was 10 metres long. That is not biologically possible because the limit for dugongs is 3.4- 4 metres. When a dugong calf is born, it is around the 9-1.2 metres size range and around 40 kgs. But as the baby grows older, and it puts on weight after eating a lot of seagrasses, the maximum weight of a dugong, I can say, can go up to 350- 400 kgs on an average. Which is why they are called gentle giants. They are massive. They are very docile animals.

15:45

Lalitha Krishnan: When you say they grow to 4 metres, has this been their size historically? I do not know if there have been any fossil finds etc? 

15:56

Swapnali Gore: Whatever documentation we have come across where dugongs have been mentioned it is beneath the size range of 3.5 to 4 metres. Relatives of the dugongs–there was a species called Steller’s Sea cow– which was really massive. It was much larger than the dugongs in size. But if you talk about the species of dugong the upper limit of dugong size is always given as 3.5-4 metres

16:20

Lalitha Krishnan: OK. Thank you so much. Prachi, now to you. You know the term seagrass meadow paints a lovely picture in the imagination. What are they really like? Also, I read that dugongs regulate seagrass ecosystems. How so?

16:42

Prachy Hatkar: So, as Swapnali mentioned earlier, dugongs are vegetarians; that they prefer seagrass. So the seagrass are present in shallow waters where the dugong reside so they are basically residing where the food is. They graze upon beds of seagrasses regulating the biomass of seagrasses. In the clear water of the Andamans for e.g. the seagrass bed looks like a football field or ground basically. It will be spread across the whole land. It is a beautiful sight. Dugongs prefer a seagrass species called Halodule specifically. Halodule and Halophila species have low fibre content and rich nitrogen content. So basically, the dugongs graze upon the seagrass meadows regulating the biomass and type of varieties of seagrass that grow in these meadows. So, they actually act as gardeners.

17:53

Lalitha Krishnan: Are you three covering aspects of dugong research in the Gulf of Kutch, Gulf of Mannar and the Andamans and Nicobar Islands?

18:02

Chinmaya Ghanekar: To talk about Tamil Nadu, Palk Bay, Gulf of Mannar, we are covering research aspects of dugongs and seagrass projects. We are also covering the outreach and capacity building and these are true for both the other sides. So, these are main four objectives which are divided into a lot of smaller sections. So, if we are talking of dugong research, we are looking at where dugongs are distributed. What are they eating? Where are they going? If they are breeding in some areas how frequently are they sighted? These are some questions we answer with dugongs. With seagrasses we look at what species are there. What types of meadows are there. What are the associated species of fish – on which my PhD is based upon. So, I am looking at how seagrasses and fish interact with each other. How they are dependent on each other. This is not exactly I would say, a direct connection to see but when we say “fish” we obviously think of food. And we have already addressed this previously; dugongs are regulating the sea grasses, and seagrasses are habitat for fish and we are connected to dugongs.

This connection and the layers in between are what we are trying to study. So, there are two things which are my main-focus. I mentioned seagrass-associated fish. What is the diversity? How do they utilise seagrasses? Are they using the space between these? Are they eating seagrasses? Are they hiding in it? Are they laying eggs on them? I am trying to answer these kinds of questions.

20:00

In terms of dugongs, I have mostly looked at the distribution of dugongs and threats associated with them. There are many, many threats like possibly a boat dashing into them or a net entanglement or pollution or coastal development. The threats that we generally hear about in marine ecosystems are also threats for dugongs. I also study that; something like plastic pollution and then we have also looked at primarily what dugongs eat in India. So, the dugong research in India has not investigated this before this so I and one of my colleagues Sumeet have done gut-content. When we get a dead dugong, we get the gut content out of it and we see what seagrass they have eaten and what they prefer. And, we have also found some plastic fragments in the gut. Those aspects we investigate from the research point of view.

In the outreach and capacity building, we mostly interact with people, different stakeholders like the Forest dept., police, marine police…all of those and try to make them aware of dugongs and give them more and more training to continuously monitor dugongs and their habitats.

21:21

Lalitha Krishnan: Well said, So, it’s not one mammal but it’s the whole world around it. Swapnali, my next question was about interacting with fishers and other folk in the coasts that you work in. What have their reactions been?  What are the challenges? And, how do dugongs behave when they encounter humans? Are we perceived as threats? Sorry, that’s a lot of questions.

21:50

Swapnali Gole: The first question is always my favourite question, honestly. It is all about communities and that is my favourite part of the work that I have done. To talk to people- the local people. So, it started with me just interacting with the fishermen. For all marine researchers, the primary stakeholder is always the fisherfolk of that particular area because they have practically spent their entire life by the sea. And nobody can have that kind of knowledge or degree of curiosity, honestly speaking. The interaction that they have with the sea and the creatures living in the sea is immense. So, we started talking with the fishermen initially to understand their idea or perceptions of dugongs and seagrasses. Also, where dugongs and seagrasses are found. So, that would be used as a baseline for our research work.

22:46

Eventually we started talking with many other people who are going out to sea in the Andamans. The benefit is that the entire area is an insular set up. Whether you are a sea-person or not, you are dependent on the sea even for commuting from one island to the other. So, your interface with the sea and these areas is going to be very much pronounced. So, we started talking to different stakeholders you know…sailors, scuba divers or for the first time, the Indian Navy and Indian coast guards. Because, there are many, many regions in the islands which are firstly geographically isolated. So, considering the limited logistics we have, we don’t always get to go to these islands. Secondly, there are restricted areas. So, there is a defense-restricted area, there is a tribal-restricted area. Again, as researchers, we don’t have permits or we need to work on the permits a lot and that takes considerable time. So, we started targeting different stakeholder agencies, who are sea-farers. That’s the only mandate required to be part of this programme which turned out to be something called The Dugong Monitoring programme – a citizen science approach. And, initially whenever we interacted with these stakeholders, not just fishermen but other people also, there was this big question mark on their face as I had mentioned in the opening statement. When you say, “dugong’, people say, “What? Are you talking about dolphins? 

Multiple times, they also correct us. “No Ma’am, you’re probably talking of dolphins.”

“No, we are talking of dugongs.”

That was the kind of response we got initially. Most of the people we spoke to were clueless of what we are studying.

The saddest part is that the dugong is the state animal of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

24:30

Lalitha Krishnan: Really?

24:31

Swapnali Gole: Yes, even in local schools, we were surprised that the local school kids were not aware of what a dugong is. Our work starts there, with that. It’s like Chinmaya mentioned, there are many elements to the work we are doing. It starts with resources but a massive, massive chunk of our work in all three sites is sensitisation of the people. Right from dugongs to the species identity, telling them, “There is a species that lives near you and why it is important, and how you can contribute to saving them…”  in a nutshell is the kind of work we are doing at three sites.

23:11

To answer your second question, I would not say that dugongs avoid humans but in Andamans especially there is an island called Shaheed Dweep which is full of tourists. There is so much anthropogenic footprint in that area and boat traffic. You will see every type of boat there, from ferry boats to speed vessels to normal dinghy boats of fishermen. All sorts of boats are there in the water and dugongs are still coming into those areas again and again. It is said globally also, that in places like Southeast Asia which are hubs of harbours and anthropogenic footprints, dugongs are still coming into those areas.

I would like to add that dugongs behave individualistically too which goes for any species. Even in the Andamans, in Shaeed Dweep, I have seen the dugongs coming into areas where there is a lot of human interfaces. But a neighbouring island group which is a Marine National Park area…when we spotted a dugong there, and got into the water, this is my personal experience, those individuals just swam away to the other island altogether. So maybe because those individual dugongs were inside a marine protected area and not used to human-interface, they were not okay with humans coming close to them but in some other areas where humans were coming in and out every day, maybe the dugongs living in that area have become adapted to that traffic or pressure.

26:39

Lalitha Krishnan: This is so interesting, thank you.

26:42

Chinmaya Ghanekar: Can I add something?

26:44

Lalitha Krishnan: Of course. Please go ahead.

26:45

Chinmaya Ghanekar: Very recently, a week ago, a fisherman told us by phone that, “We are seeing dugongs every day in the Gulf of Mannar” in an area which is kind of a tourist area–the Tourism dept. also manages tourism there. So, he (fisherman) said that, “whenever we go out for fishing, we see dugongs daily. They come near the boat at so close a distance, you can almost pet them”. This is a different kind of interaction they have with the dugong and there is a kind of friendship between them. So, the boat comes, the dugong comes, they see it and feel happy about it. So, it is also a very, very positive interaction between the community and the dugong.

27:28

Lalitha Krishnan: That is such a wonderful thing to hear. It is making me love the dugong, a mammal I have never seen in my life. Dolphins are also known to behave like that. Maybe it is one of the reasons why they mistake them.

27:42

Chinmaya Ghanekar: Maybe but people will have different interactions with different individuals or populations differently. Like Swapnali rightly said, “There are individual reactions”. Something like in the Red sea. If you follow #dugong on Instagram, every day, you will see a photo of the Red sea where the dugong is  surrounded by divers. And, it’s feeding and kind or sleeping or doing its thing. But, that doesn’t happen here. So, the individualistic behaviour is very pronounced and it may vary with different populations also.

26:15

Lalitha Krishnan: So, the dugong is also been accorded the highest protection status i.e. Schedule-I of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. How does it translate in the real world? Would you like to answer that?

28.33

Chinmaya Ghanekar: 

This Wildlife Protection Act is considered one of the strongest conservation acts in the world because it has schedules. It has a lot of animals that receive protection. There are different schedules in the Wildlife Protection Act giving different status of protection to different species. The infamous one is the tiger out of all. The tiger has Schedule I protection, so do dugongs. Which is the highest kind of protection the Wildlife Act can provide. There are so many restrictions. Like, you cannot touch that animal. You cannot research that animal without permission. You cannot utilise any part of the animal in that case, not any part…even if it is excreta which happens in ambergris fish like whales. It is still part of the whale so we cannot utilise that. To even touch that kind of animal, you need permission. It is that kind of protection.

-Chinmaya Ghanekar

29:41

Lalitha Krishnan: Sorry…does that apply to even a dead animal?

29:43

Chinmaya Ghanekar: Yes, even for dead animals. Wildlife Institute of India has acquired all the permissions and we collect those samples and work with it. So, with this kind of protection, we always need permission from the government and the government is always very, very strict about it. We cannot work without permission anywhere. 

30:11

I will give you an example which happened in Thondi (Palk Bay), when I joined the project. It was a case of dugong hunting. It created a lot of fishermen agitating because it is part of their tradition and we struggle with it. They hunted it (the dugong) and the marine police put charges on them. Their boat was confiscated, their nets were confiscated. They were put in jail for seven straight years. The fisherman was about 50 years old. This kind of completely puts all kinds of restrictions on their lives. They cannot get their boat back, they lose all the money they put in for their equipment. So, the implementation of the Wildlife Protection Act is very strict in the real world.

31:05

There is one more story. When I was going on a boat, by mistake, there was a communication gap between the highest forest official and the field people and they did not allow me to go on the boat and research the dugong. So it is that strict, you need all things in place and the Wildlife Protection Act makes things happen at least in case of dugongs which I have seen personally.

31:35

Lalitha Krishnan: It is actually a good thing, isn’t it? In a way, it is protecting the animal which is what it is supposed to do.

31:43

Chinmaya Ghanekar: It might not be so straightforward as it sounded in the answer. There are a lot of agencies that come into it but then it happens. It does happen.

32:00

Lalitha Krishnan: Prachi, what part of the dugong research do you like personally? Or what has been your most amazing take away or encounter.

32:05

Prachy Hatkar: As I mentioned that I have been working with dugongs since the last five years. When I started working in Gujarat, like Swapnali said, when we went for the awareness programme, in schools or interacted with the locals, the fishermen, they mentioned that they had sighted dugongs in Gujarat-in the Gulf of Kutch-long back. Maybe 15-20 years ago. Recently they have not seen any live dugongs as such.

We were fortunate enough to see a live dugong which was the first photographic evidence in the Gulf of Kutch two years ago through the drone survey with one of my colleagues who accompanied me in the field. When we went seagrass mapping, we could actually see two dugongs.

33:02

Lalitha Krishnan: Really? Were they of the same size?

33:05

Prachy Hatkar: They were actually adult sized. We thought we could see a mother and calf pair in another sighting. But we were fortunate enough to have a dugong sighting. We knew then the dugong was not locally extinct from Gujarat.  

33:26

Lalitha Krishnan: Such a positive sighting. Swapnali, how about you?

33:28

Swapnali Gole: On a similar line, I have spent more than seven years studying dugongs. And my first sighting…from boats I had spotted dugongs. Honestly speaking, in the Andamans it is pretty possible to spot a dugong considering the water is also clean. My first underwater sighting–despite diving so much throughout the islands, happened after five years. I remember I had spent 45 minutes with this individual. I had almost given up all hope… “I won’t see it” I said to myself. 

So then when I spotted that individual, it was like “Wow”. You know, your entire journey as a dugong researcher flashes just right in front of you. I was literally crying underwater. I cried so much my mask filled up with my tears.

-Swapnali Gole

I was so happy and then I realised I had left all my friends who had been diving with me behind and I was literally following the individual.

34:38

And in those 45 minutes, it was just me and the dugong. You know, it was a surreal moment for me. Then I was a very happy soul. Finally, after all the hard work I had put in.

34:48

Lalitha Krishnan: That’s an exclusive. First of all, who gets 45 minutes alone with an animal? You are extremely lucky.

34:55

Swapnali Gole: I am lucky. I have so much gratitude for those 45 minutes.

35:01

Lalitha Krishnan: But you all deserve it for the work you have done. That is your reward to see a free, happy, healthy animal living in its habitat. Chinmaya, do you want to add to that?

35:17

Chinmaya Ghanekar: The first ever live dugong sighting I had…  I was dying to see a dugong. Because, everybody was telling you they saw a dugong here, a dugong there but you are not seeing one. It is frustrating. It’s very frustrating after spending a long, long time in the sea. I was talking about the other work I was doing per different aspects of seagrasses and other related fauna… So, we were doing that, sitting on the boat, and sieving the sand out. So, I was doing the sieving and behind me, I just heard this loud breath in the water. It was a loud, loud breath. I left the sieve down and when I turned around, I saw the tail of a dugong which was going underwater. I cannot tell you how beautiful that was. I have a picture-memory of that and I really want to see that again but the first experience will always be special. And this was special.

36:21

Lalitha Krishnan: True. Talking of breath, are dugongs vocal?

36:27

Prachy Hatkar: Yes, they are very much. They chirp like birds. They actually chirp under water. As you know, sound travels four times faster underwater compared to land. So, obviously, that’s the only communication that works for them – underwater sound.

36:49

Swapnali Gole: in addition to what Prachy said, there are various categories of vocalisation patterns which have been identified for dugongs. We unfortunately do not have any dugong vocalisation study happening in India by WII or any other researchers. But in Japan, people have studied dugong vocalisation patterns. So, they have categorised dugong vocalisation patterns…they also bark. So, it is a different frequency range for each category. And, then they chirp as Prachy has mentioned. But then, there is the possibility that dugongs will vocalise very rarely; and only when it is fully needed. They are not like dolphins who echolocate and communicate.

17:28

So there have been studies where the sample size of what researchers have put forward to study communication patterns has been immense but compared to the efforts that have gone into it, there have been very few recordings of dugong communications. So, that is also one point to be understood: that not always do dugongs communicate as dolphins do or other marine mammals do.

37:53

Lalitha Krishnan: Sounds like such a very self-sufficient mammal and very smart too. What is the role of WII in Dugong conservation in India? What are the government initiatives in place right now for protecting it? And what is the way forward? Also, I always ask three questions at a time.

38:18

Chinmaya Ghanekar: Yes, because they are very much connected to each other. Wildlife Institute of India is part of the government. Though it is autonomous it works very, very closely with the government…different, different departments; not only the forest department. As Swapnali mentioned we also work with the Indian navy, coast guard, all of these defence bodies. 

The Wildlife Institute of India initiated the CAMPA dugong recovery programme in 2016. From that time, Swapnali is the most eligible person to comment as she is one of the first researchers from WII who has started work on dugongs. Before that, in 2013, Dr ShivKumar and one more researcher called Aditi Nayar. They both had a research programme regarding dugongs in Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Andamans and Nicobar; where they have seen the perspective of people about dugongs typically, the local communities who interact with the sea on a daily basis. From that they had come up with something called the Critical Dugong Habitats where dugong sightings or populations are more. And also, human pressure is a lot in the area. So, both those things combined are called Critical Dugong Habitats.

39:45 

And based on that we started our work in the CAMPA Dugong Recovery Programme. But as I mentioned earlier, we started with four objectives. One is dugong research, the other is seagrass and associated fauna research; one is outreach and the other is capacity building. So, WII has been actively working on all four of the objectives.

40:17

Research we have touched upon what kind of research we do. But in outreach programmes, there is this highlighted programme called the Dugong Scholarship programme which is a very novel initiative as it targets the fishermen-kids. So, we go from school to school, identify fishermen-kids and we give scholarships to them which is Rs 500/- per month and these scholarships are  given at such a time-in 9th or 11th grade-when they might not have money to go for further education.  At least they will have this one 10th pass certificate or 12th pass certificate which is at least the basic level of education one would expect from someone. So, the scholarship is given at that time.

41:09

And through them, as Swapnali mentioned, the dugong volunteer network or volunteer programme network. Their scholarship student-parents being fisherfolk, they also provide us information. So, we give them the scholarship and we get information. It’s a barter and it’s a beautiful barter because we get to know so many things which we might not be knowing about dugongs through research papers. Because, the local experience is somebody’s father who has been fishing probably for the last 20 years. He will have the experience which we might not expect. Something like, the dugong-friendship story we told you about. This Dugong Scholarship programme has immensely grown in all the three main states. We now have about 500 students who are part of that programme. And we will continue it for the next few years or so. 

42:05

In terms of capacity building specifically–the word capacity building itself says we need to strengthen the stakeholder’s capacity. So, we give them scuba diving training programmes or drone training programmes to monitor and understand more about their habitats. Because, in the end, maybe we will be there, or somebody else will come, but the forest department and other stakeholders…they’re going to stay forever. So, they are the people who should actually see this diversity and have long term monitoring, and WII is kind of hand holding them all the time. And it’s not true only for dugong projects, iit’s for all the outreach and research combined projects WII has, hand holding is a huge, huge part which we play all the time.

42:57

We have also held Marine mammals stranding workshops in Tamil Nadu to state veterinarians and range forest officers. In that, what happens is –you always see videos on facebook or other social media or the news that a whale is stranded or a dolphin or turtles are stranded/dead or something similar. It is a pretty unique situation because we don’t know what to do. If it is a live animal, we may want to rescue it but how, we do not know. Or if it is a dead animal, should we bury it? What samples should be collected? What information can we get out of it? Since marine mammals are very distinct, as researchers or forest officials also, we cannot interact with them on a daily basis. It is only part of the job we do. We have so many other things. So, if a dugong is stranded, we can actually understand the size of it, why it has died or is there any other associated information viz. the gut content I was talking about.

44:07

To get this kind of response, they should be trained people and there should be veterinarians to understand what the reason of death is. Are there any diseases? Are there any infections? All those kinds of questions, veterinarians can answer. So, giving them training on what to do, how to do was a huge, huge part of that workshop.

44:29

We also came up with a book on how to respond to these events. And, hopefully that workshop is going to be repeated with other sets of people so more people can be aware of what to do. WII always provides these kinds of workshops to strengthen the data collection and in the end it all strengthens our understanding of dugong and seagrass populations, of course other marine life populations.

And, the government has been very proactive in dugong conservation. Recently, and this is a huge success story for the government, a new Dugong Conservation Reserve has been declared in north Palk Bay which is around a 50 kms stretch and 10 kms of shore, so approx. a 500 sq kms. area which is a specifically designated area. And, this is the first conservation reserve for dugongs in the country. So, we were notified in 2022. Now they are coming up with a management plan for local people. How to give training to say, stakeholders like tourists. They are planning a dugong conservation centre, an interpretation centre where people can learn more about dugongs. Maybe learn snorkelling, see the fish, seagrasses, and all of it. So, this is a government initiative which they are doing really, really proactively.

46:13

Lalitha Krishnan. Well, good to know. There’s so much work you’ll are doing, individually, as an organisation and with the government, That’s great. OK. The next question. Prachy, I am going to start with you. Could you share a word that will help us increase our understanding/vocabulary of dugongs? Maybe a concept or a word. Something that is significant to you.

46:42

Prachy Hatkar: It (Dugongs) is a part of our marine life and needs to be preserved. The fact is I didn’t know about dugongs before joining the project. I literally saw an advertisement and I did not know such an animal existed, that is a vegetarian mammal. The manatees are already there but they are basically living in freshwater. This one (dugong) is one which is still surviving after so many years and that is so incredible. That’s my thought that we should be saving this marine animal which will go extinct if we don’t make the effort.

47:40

Swapnali Gole:  If I must send this message across in one word, I would say, people should remember the word ‘umbrella’. When it rains and you open the umbrella, whoever is standing under the umbrella gets saved from the rain.  That is exactly, that is exactly what dugongs are for seagrass meadows. It is also called an umbrella species. So, if you save dugongs, you save seagrasses. Chinmaya said she was working on fishes. It saves fish. Me and Prachy are working on associated invertebrates of seagrass habitats for our PhDs. They also get saved. Every single individual which is associated with seagrasses, including dugongs will be saved if you save dugongs. An umbrella. 

48:22

Lalitha Krishnan: Fantastic. And, also eventually, the humans around those habitats. 

48:49

Swapnali Gole: Exactly. And also, the economy. Sorry, I missed out on that. So, the people who are dependent on seagrasses will be saved.

48:42

Chinmaya Ghanekar: I would say, ‘family.’ Not only because as researchers we have developed this emotional connection with the animal over the years but it’s the family structure they have. It is mostly a maternal family. And, the bond between the mother and the calf is so beautiful, so special that people may imagine having the bond with their own mother. It is as special as that.

We must also recognise that these animals will have their life and we are kind of interfering with that so maybe we need to hold back a little and see what we are doing to the families.

-Chinmaya Ghanekar

49:34

Lalitha Krishnan: Very good. Thank you all.

49:45

Prachy Hatkar: I wanted to say a few things. We celebrate World Dugong Day on 20th May every year. We have a huge month of celebration; we carry out activities in the field. So, please stay tuned on our social media, website where we keep updating our activities. There was this school teacher from the Andamans, Chanchal Singha Roy who wrote a book called “Dugong My Friend’. We have translated that in regional languages and we do circulate these in schools. So that copy is also available on the website if somebody wants to check.

50:18

Lalitha Krishnan: Hey guys, that was fantastic. You’ll rock, really! Three amazing women. There is so much you’ll are doing. I am genuinely grateful for you’ll coming on for this interview and speaking your hearts and minds and sharing everything you know. I learnt so much, I really feel like going out there and checking these places out….

50:47

Chinmaya Ghanekar: You’re always welcome. Please come.

Audio: Birdsong

Birdsong by hillside resident, the collared owlet.

Dugong Photo Credit: Darius Quadros. Researchers photos courtesy Swapnali, Chinmaya and Prachi. Podcast cover/label design by Lalitha Krishnan.

Disclaimer: Views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the podcast and show notes belong solely to the guest/guests featured in the episode, and not necessarily to the host of this podcast/blog or the guest’s employer, organization, committee or other group or individual