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CNN
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Legend has it that the mermaid was inspired by an elusive marine mammal that was so timid that it would run away at the sight of a human.
this is an animal feature A prominent place in Southeast Asian folklore, many cultures believe it was originally part-human, and many languages use a synonym for mermaid to refer to it. To the wider world, it is called a dugong.
“Dugongs are manatees. They are closely related to manatees, and their closest terrestrial relative is the elephant,” said Christopher Marshall, associate professor of marine biology at Texas A&M University. “They are unique among marine mammals because they are vegetarians — they only eat seagrass and other aquatic plants.”
Marshall admits that the connection to mermaids seems a bit far-fetched, although “that’s what their scientific name refers to too – their order is called ‘kraken,’ which is another word for mermaid. There’s a lot of fun around them. Cultural myth.”
Not all of these are benign, though.their tears are Sell Bottled as love potions or aphrodisiacs, some of their body parts – including bones, ivory and penises – are harvested for their purported medicinal properties. Their teeth were used to make cigarette holders. They have also been hunted for meat and oil over thousands of years, which, combined with habitat loss, has greatly reduced their numbers. International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Specified The dugong was a vulnerable species in 1982, but said the extent of the decline in dugong numbers was unknown.
Dugong habitats are found along the Indian and Pacific coasts in more than 40 countries.However, they were declared functionally extinct in China last summer, and their populations have rapidly increased decline In countries such as Kenya, Japan and Indonesia, according to the United Nations Conservation Program.
“These animals have two major weaknesses,” explains Marshall. “One is habitat loss: seagrass is disappearing all over the world. Two, bycatch: This is a big problem for dugongs in the Persian Gulf.”
The Gulf has the second largest dugong population in the world, after Australia. About 3,000 people live off the coast of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, and a conservation program is currently restoring coastal ecosystems.
“We’ve been studying dugongs for the past 20 years,” said Maitha Mohamed Al Hameli, a marine biologist with the Abu Dhabi Environment Agency. “We first monitored them to understand their distribution, and based on that data, we managed to highlight some of the marine areas that were later declared protected — exactly where our dugong population densities are highest.”
The emirate has already restored 7,500 hectares of mangroves, seagrass meadows and coral reefs in a project targeting land and sea, and plans to add another 4,500 hectares by 2030. It also imposed a ban on fishing gear with dugong as bycatch.
“The restoration project is huge. In addition to protected areas, we have laws and regulations that protect the critical habitat of these animals. Our population has remained stable for the past 20 years, according to our biennial aerial survey , it’s actually increasing,” said Al Hameli.
The program is expected to have positive cascading effects on other creatures, including dolphins, sea turtles and hundreds of species of fish. “The recovery of mangroves, seagrass and corals also has a huge impact on fisheries. Many mangrove and seagrass beds act as nurseries for fish, especially those of commercial value, at the beginning of their lives,” said Al Hameli, who added , the increase in mangrove and seagrass patches will also increase the amount of carbon they can sequester from the atmosphere.
According to Marshall, the prospect of dugongs is not only a guaranteed food source — they must eat 10 percent of their body weight each day — but also more room for them to breed and breastfeed safely. “If the dugongs don’t feel the population is safe, they won’t mate,” Al Hameli said. “They are very timid. They have a strong flight reflex. If someone approaches them, they swim or dive…so a sense of safety and an abundance of food are key drivers of their reproduction.”
Because dugongs are shy, there is hardly any ecotourism to build around them, making it harder to raise awareness about conservation efforts, Marshall said. “Unfortunately, we tend to keep only what we can actually see, and the ones that are charismatic or really cute. The team in Abu Dhabi, they are way ahead of anyone else in the region, and I fully support them what’s been done in terms of habitat restoration,” he said.
“They’re smart about it because there’s a relationship between mangroves, seagrass and coral reefs, so you really need to restore all three to keep the seagrass around, which is what dugongs rely on,” he added.
“It’s been a very long, uphill battle, but it’s what really needs to be done.”
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