Dugongs recovering, need cross-border efforts in conservation

Drone surveys estimate over 200 dugongs in Palk Bay–Gulf of Mannar, reflecting a strong recovery of the population in India’s first Dugong Conservation Reserve.
Local fishing communities are key partners in conservation through rescue and release, awareness programmes, financial incentives, and community-linked welfare schemes.
Threats to dugongs include entanglement in nets, habitat degradation, and unchecked poaching across the border, highlighting the need for stricter regulations, cross-border cooperation, and satellite tracking of dugong movements.

A thriving population of more than 200 dugongs, a regionally endangered marine mammals, has made the Dugong Conservation Reserve in Palk Bay and the neighbouring Gulf of Mannar (together known as the PB-GoM region) their habitat, according to a 2023–24 drone survey by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII).

This recovery of the dugong population, according to WII, has been enabled through a multipronged conservation approach, including awareness programmes for fishers, habitat restoration, community outreach, and an upgraded reward system for rescue and release.

“WII is yet to release the latest survey report at Palk Bay carried out in 2024, but the estimation points to a thriving number of more than 200 healthy, adult dugongs in Palk Bay and the Gulf of Mannar region, which are contiguous habitats for the dugong, a semi-migratory animal,” says J. Antony Johnson, the chief scientist at the National Dugong Recovery Programme, WII.

K. Sivakumar, professor at Pondicherry University and a former WII scientist, however, estimates close to 300 dugongs in the PB-GoM region.

In 2022, the Tamil Nadu government declared about 500 square kilometres of Palk Bay as India’s first Dugong Conservation Reserve, strengthening ground-level protection. “Bottom trawlers can operate only five nautical miles from shore. Purse seine and shore seine nets were banned in 2020. Regulation measures, including daily passes and speed limits for mechanised boats, are enforced,” says Mani Venkatesh, Forest Range Officer in Pudukkottai district.

Gulf of Mannar (top) and Palk Bay (bottom) separated by a narrow strip of land between Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. Image by NASA Johnson via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

Popularly known as sea cows, dugongs (Dugong dugon) are herbivorous marine mammals. As a part of the Afrotheria evolutionary group, they are closely related to elephants. “Dugongs live up to 70 years and bear a single calf after a gestation period of 14 months. They are social animals and tend their young for up to two years. They communicate through touch, sound, and vision, and conserving them is a part of our national and biological heritage,” says Balaji Vedharajan of the OMCAR Foundation, who is part of the project.

Found in shallow tropical waters, “the semi-enclosed Palk Bay region is the best bet for dugong conservation,” he adds. They are listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.

Since fishing is a prominent livelihood in the region, employing millions of fishers, very strict conservation measures could not be implemented in the waters. According to Vedharajan, about 840 mechanised boats and 6,914 fibre boats operate from Mallipattinam, Kottaipattinam, Sethubavachathiram, and other fishing harbours in the PB-GoM region alone. In this scenario, dugongs and other fauna like turtles must coexist with fishers, who depend on the seas for their livelihood.

Fishers’ hand in conservation

Dugongs, a species vulnerable to extinction, were once heavily poached for their meat, considered a delicacy by the fishers. Locally called aavuriya in Tamil, the meat was sold openly in markets until a few decades ago. “There were instances of about 100 dugongs (an adult weighs 300-400 kg) being slaughtered in a single week, and records show about 250 dugongs were poached and butchered between Keelakarai and Periapattinam villages in 1983-1984,” says Sivakumar. “But poaching has been largely controlled now, thanks to greater awareness and the protection measures enforced by various stakeholders,” he adds.

Traditional skin divers from the fishing community plant seagrass nurseries at a depth of four-five metres off the shore of Vallavanpattinam fishers’ hamlet. Until a few decades ago, dugongs were hunted by fishers for their meat. They are now involved in conservation measures. Image courtesy of OMCAR Foundation. — Skin divers from the fishing community plant seagrass nurseries at a depth of four-five metres off the shore of Vallavanpattinam fishers’ hamlet. Until a few decades ago, dugongs were hunted by fishers for their meat. The fishers are now involved in conservation measures. Image courtesy of OMCAR Foundation.

Today, fishers are the “first responders” in the rescue and release of dugongs caught in nets. In 2024-25, the Tamil Nadu Forest Department held around 80 awareness programmes across coastal hamlets in Thanjavur and Pudukkottai districts to spread the message of dugong conservation.

Arumbugal, an NGO, held these programmes at around 50 of the 55 fishing hamlets along the Adirampattinam–Ammapattinam coastline bordering the reserve during the same period. “There is a remarkable shift in the mindset of fishers. Earlier, they shied away from participating. Now, they are not only receptive to conservation strategies but also eager to implement them,” says R. Mathivanan, the founder of Arumbugal Trust.

For fishers, dugong conservation is becoming part of their own livelihood security. “The country boat fisher associations in each hamlet have risen to the occasion by owning up to the cause of dugong conservation. We are told the dugong is a keystone species, which helps the marine ecosystem thrive. So we steer clear of large seagrass beds, corals, and mangrove systems to save the ecosystem for dugongs, turtles, and our future,” says Sheikh Dawood, a fisher from P.R. Pattinam.

Yet challenges remain. “Dugongs more often get entangled in nets between 3 am and 6 am, when they are most active,” explains Vedharajan who is a marine biologist. “Turbidity and low visibility in Palk Bay, due to estuarine silt from the Agniar and Ambuliar rivers, coupled with overfishing, make life harder for dugongs.” Rescue efforts are a race against time. “There is only a narrow window of nine to 14 minutes to save an entangled dugong. This is done by cutting through the net around its head so it can be safely released,” says Anand Kumar, District Forest Officer, Thanjavur.

According to Sivakumar, about 20 dugongs have been rescued and released in two decades. Recent rescues include two dugongs freed in 2023, one each in November 2024, January and February 2025.

Incentives for fishers, raised from ₹10,000 to ₹50,000 for each rescue, along with reward systems, have strengthened conservation efforts.

Palk Bay hosts India’s largest seagrass meadows, but frequent cyclones have degraded them. In the past two years, the Tamil Nadu Forest Department has undertaken seagrass replenishment using drone-enabled acoustic mapping. About 10 sites of 100 square metres each were identified off Vallanvanpattinam near Peravurani, where trained divers from the fishing community planted bamboo and coir frames containing 52 sprigs each at a depth of four metres. “The habitat restoration was taken up at a cost of ₹10 lakh, with funds allotted under the Tamil Nadu Biodiversity Conservation and Greening Project for Climate Change Response (TBGPCCR) in 2023–24 and 2024–25,” says Kumar.

Fisherfolk prepare bamboo frames with seagrass sprigs as part of a dugong habitat restoration project in Vallavanpattinam in Palk Bay. Image courtesy of District Forest Office, Thanjavur.

Community outreach is another key pillar. The Forest Department and OMCAR Foundation have installed solar lamps in 14 hamlets and nine fish landing yards, improving safety and reducing reliance on kerosene. OMCAR also runs a dugong scholarship programme, offering ₹18,000 annually to orphaned children of fishers, further linking conservation to community welfare.

Areas of concern

Experts say that despite the progress made, more needs to be done in conservation areas, such as minimising the threats to dugongs, including the prevention of entanglement in fishing nets by banning trawl nets, and by strictly enforcing speed limits for mechanised boats, as dugongs are killed by getting caught in the propellers of mechanised boats.

“There is more work that needs to be done to eliminate localised threats in the form of entanglement, overfishing and rare cases of illegal poaching to the dugongs in Indian territorial waters, including PB-GoM, Gulf of Kutch and Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where the marine mammals cling to their last pockets of precarious existence,” says Elrika D’souza, Scientist (Ocean and Coasts) at Nature Conservation Foundation, who is currently studying how dugong behaviour is altered in response to anthropogenic disturbances.

“Dugongs, which are semi-nomadic, move across in search of seagrass availability, and they travel more than 100 miles. The semi-migration pattern is still to be studied in detail, and it is a blind spot in dugong conservation,” D’Souza adds.

According to Johnson, steps are being taken to address this gap in conservation. “We already know that dugongs prefer Palk Bay during the pre-monsoon season and move to the Gulf of Mannar in the post-monsoon season. A telemetry-based satellite tracking system of dugongs in the PB-GoM region, which is in the pipeline, would vastly help study the semi-migratory patterns of the gentle marine mammals, the population of which are slowly recovering in the PB-GoM region,” he says.

Fisherfolk also act as the “first responders” in the rescue and release of dugongs caught in nets. Image by special arrangement. — Fisherfolk also act as the “first responders” in the rescue and release of dugongs caught in nets. Image by District Forest Office, Thanjavur.

Despite the presence of 200 dugongs across the PB-GoM, intergovernmental cooperation between India and Sri Lanka could further strengthen conservation efforts, as dugongs migrate across to Sri Lankan shores between Jaffna and Mannar.

With poaching still rampant and unchecked on the Sri Lankan side, an integrated approach involving both governments and other stakeholders would greatly benefit the survival of the species in the Indian Ocean region.

“There are no ground efforts whatsoever in Sri Lanka’s northwest fisher communities on dugong conservation awareness, and so poaching for meat is still prevalent, posing a threat to the very survival of dugongs in the PB-GoM, the marine corridor between the two countries. The ground situation in Sri Lanka is what it was two decades ago,” Vedharajan says.

Vedharajan, during his recent visit to Sri Lanka on the invitation of the Indian High Commission in Colombo, held discussions with local NGOs in Sri Lanka, the Indian High Commission, the Department of Coastal Conservation and Coastal Resource Management, and also with IUCN Sri Lanka to establish measures and protocols for dugong conservation by engaging the two countries.

“The MoUs were signed with two Colombo-based NGOs, including Biodiversity Education and Research (BEAR), for knowledge sharing, capacity building and technical know-how such as seagrass restoration mapping. The logical next step would be to organise a brainstorming workshop involving stakeholders from both countries, for which financial and institutional commitment from both countries is required,” he says.

Banner image: Representative image of dugongs by Metro Toronto Zoo Toronto Canada via Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain).