
Photo: (c) Eddie, some rights reserved (CC BY) · CC BY
Dugong dugon
Rare visitor: recorded only occasionally in this country
Diet
Seagrasses, grazed from the seabed
Habitat
Warm, shallow coastal waters with seagrass meadows: bays, lagoons and mangrove channels
Size
Adults rarely over 3m long
Weight
Usually 250–900kg
The dugong, or sea cow, is a large, grey-brown marine mammal with a torpedo-shaped body, no dorsal fin and no hind limbs. Its front limbs are short, paddle-like flippers, and it swims with a notched, dolphin-like tail fluke, which tells it apart from the manatees. The snout is sharply turned down, an adaptation for feeding on seagrass on the seabed. Males grow a pair of short tusks at puberty (Wikipedia, general species account).
The dugong is the only strictly marine plant-eating mammal. Across its range it depends entirely on seagrass meadows, which limits it to warm, shallow coastal waters, especially wide, sheltered bays and mangrove channels; it can tolerate brackish water. Populations throughout its range have been reduced by hunting for meat and oil, drowning in fishing nets and loss of seagrass, and many are now small and isolated.