Most people would agree that dugongs are some of the most charismatic and interesting marine mammals out there. While often mistaken for manatees, dugongs don’t enter freshwater areas like their close relatives and many other factors make them stand out from other species. For instance, male dugongs grow tusks when they reach maturity. While females also tend to grow tusks, these erupt in older individuals. Dugongs breathe in oxygen at the surface through their nostrils, before they dive down to feed, holding their breath for up to 11 minutes doing so. Their eyesight might not be the best, but they can hear very well. Individuals communicate between each other using barks, squeaks, and chirps that can travel through water.

As the world’s only strictly herbivorous marine mammal, dugongs are reliant on seagrass meadows for food. However, as seagrass habitats continue to disappear all around the globe through the expansion of ports, dredging, and other factors, the survival of dugongs is also threatened. It is estimated that dugong populations have declined by 90% in the past 30 years.

Listed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as ‘Vulnerable’ and commonly regarded as a globally threatened species, dugongs are increasingly threatened by human activities such as entanglement in fishing gear, pollution, boat collisions, poor water quality and human-caused loss of their primary food source – seagrass. While still thriving in some areas of the world, including Western Australia’s Kimberley, Pilbara and Shark Bay regions which are home to some of the largest remaining dugong populations in the world, human-induced pressures seemed to have been too much to bear for some local populations.