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Word on the Reef
Inspiring interviews with marine conservation legends.
Word on the Reef
S3 E10: Dugong Wars: The Fight to Save Mermaids with Professor Helene Marsh
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When Professor Helene Marsh first began researching dugongs on the Great Barrier Reef, the only ones she encountered were dead - tangled in fishing nets.
Then, in the 1990s, Queensland became the centre of a fierce conservation battle known as the “Dugong Wars”. No torpedoes were fired, but the conflict between marine scientists, industry groups and governments was intense, as researchers like Professor Marsh fought to remove nets from critical dugong habitat.
Today, dugongs face even greater threats, from climate change and habitat loss to extreme weather and declining seagrass meadows. In this episode, Professor Marsh shares the remarkable story of the Dugong Wars, the science behind these elusive “mermaids of the sea”, and the urgent mission to ensure they survive into the future.
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Big Hairy Mermaids: An Introduction
SPEAKER_00Good morning everyone and welcome to Word on the Reef. I'm your host, diver and marine conservationist Tanya Murphy. And with me, as always, is Kans Aquarium's marine educator and fish whisperer Brett Goodburn. Good morning, everyone. We're back. Now, Brett, today we're playing Guess Who. Oh, good, I like this. So you need to guess who I am, okay? All right. According to folklore, I'm the animal that inspired Sailor's stories about mermaids. But I can grow up to four metres or thirteen feet long. I can weigh over a ton and I have whiskers.
SPEAKER_03Well it sounds a bit like my cat, but I'm gonna go with a gig on stick out.
SPEAKER_00It's a big hairy mermaid. I can hold my breath for longer than six minutes and dive to a depth of 40 metres, but I spend most of my life in shallow waters eating my favourite food, seagrass.
SPEAKER_03I love this seagrass, don't I?
SPEAKER_00I can eat up to 30 kilograms of it in a day.
SPEAKER_0330 kilos.
SPEAKER_00I communicate with my friends using chirps, whistles, barks, and other sounds that echo through the water. I'm a marine mammal, but I'm more closely related to elephants than I am to whales or dolphins. I am found in tropical and subtropical waters in more than 40 countries, spanning all the way from East Africa to Vanuatu in the Pacific.
SPEAKER_03Wow, they're broad range, aren't they?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. So you're right. I am a Jong, also known as a sea cow. Jugongs are one of four living species in the order Tyrenea, which also includes three species of manatees. The name Tyrenia derives from the Greek mythological tyrants, who were enchanting sea nymphs who lured sailors to their peril with songs. I don't know about you, Brett, but I think those sailors must have been hitting the rum barrels a bit too hard.
SPEAKER_03I reckon they might have no more rum for them.
SPEAKER_00But I guess it gets lonely out at sea.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you'll see anything.
SPEAKER_00They definitely don't look like Princess Ariel, but they are incredibly adorable and charismatic creatures. Here in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, they typically don't hang around the outer coral reef, rather they live close to shore where the shallow seagrass beds are found. And that's also where the crocodiles live, so most people don't go snorkeling or diving with them. So sadly, I've never personally snorkeled or dived with a Jugong. Have you, Brett?
SPEAKER_03Oh geez, I wish I could say yes. Of all the stuff I've seen underwater, I have not seen one.
SPEAKER_00You spent decades in the water. You spent many, many hours. So that goes to show how elusive they are, at least in the areas where people usually go diving and stuffing.
SPEAKER_03The only one I have seen is the one that's Sydney Aquarium.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_03He's got the Jugong Cafe that says just let us.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00Wow. So according to my friends who work at Green Island, just off cans, there is a Jugong who is often sighted there. And I mean by often, that's probably like once or twice a year or something.
SPEAKER_03That's often.
SPEAKER_00Whom they have named Dylan. And Dylan the Jugong. And that makes sense because there are plentiful seagrass meadows at Green Island, so it seems like a nice place for a Jugong to hang out.
Introducing Professor Helene Marsh
SPEAKER_00But what do we know about Jugong populations across the world? What threats are they facing, and what can we do to help protect them? Joining us to help unpack these questions, we're incredibly honoured to have a guest today who is a James Cook University Jugong expert, Emeritus Professor of Environmental Science, Helene Marsh. Good morning, Professor Marsh. Welcome to Word on the Reef.
SPEAKER_01Good morning. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, good morning, Professor. Thanks for joining us. So we're really looking forward to this one.
SPEAKER_00It's great to have you on the show. I understand your scientific career started way back in the 60s and you've had an incredible, inspiring career researching and advocating for marine life. Your CV must be about a thousand pages long. Can you sum it up for us and also explain how you first fell in love with Jugongs?
SPEAKER_01Okay, well I've I've been very lucky and I've had the opportunity to work on a number of marine animals. In fact, I didn't start out working on Jugongs at all. I started out studying cone shell venom, which is really, really different. But after I finished my PhD and it was in the early 70s, I was unexpectedly given an opportunity to do a the health system research on Jugong and my involvement went from there.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. You've had over 200 writings published, you've worked at the British Museum, you've worked for CSIRO, you've done many, many different things over your career. But one thing that I saw pop out was that you were in New Idea in 1983. Can you tell us about that?
SPEAKER_01Oh, that was pretty embarrassing actually. I didn't know anything about it. And suddenly I see a photo of me on the cover of New Idea, and uh th they were interested in on the cover, wow. Uh on marine scientists and uh and women doing scientific research and suddenly there was me and I have to tell you that some of my scientist friends thought this was a bit of a joke.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's a bit rough. Oh, are they just jealous? Because they've never been on the front cover. That's amazing. Way back in eighty-three, they're all about women in STEM. Love to see it.
SPEAKER_01So it was a l a really, really long time ago. Anyway, that was uh it yes, I I was a bit embarrassed about it because, you know, I literally didn't know that it was gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00Well, you're very humble. Professor Marsh,
Interacting with Dugongs & Why they Have Whiskers
SPEAKER_00can you please tell us about some of your best ever personal interactions with Jugongs? Have you ever swum with them?
SPEAKER_01Uh yes, but when you swim with a Jewgong, it's very much on the Jugong terms and that's probably why people find it uh really hard. The first live Jew Gong, I met some dead ones, but the first live Jewgong that I met was in an aquarium in cannes. And there was a a calf there for a few months that eventually died and and I had the opportunity to try and feed that calf with a bottle and it was a bit like cuddling sandpaper, I want to say. Yeah. They have quite a a rough skin. But it was so exciting and I uh certainly fell in love with that calf.
SPEAKER_03Where was that aquarium back then? Was that the one at the Pier Marketplace? The smaller one?
SPEAKER_01It was very small.
SPEAKER_03Yes, that's probably what Yeah, I think that was I think that was the only one that we had back then at the pier. Yeah. So the skin you say is rough. Would you I don't know whether you've done any time with sharks. So that's a similar skin to sharks?
SPEAKER_01Uh no, no, nothing like sharks.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But they have very, very fine hairs all over their body. I mean, people see the whiskers on the muzzle and you know, those bristles on the muscle. Everyone's familiar with those. But there are really fine hairs all over the whole body, are quite sparse, and they're like cats' whiskers. And they're sensory hairs. So dugongs actually learn a lot from feeling, and it's those hairs that make it feel a bit rough.
SPEAKER_00Well, they also have a common ancestor with elephants, so I imagine the feeling of leathery elephant skin more so than shark skin with scaly teeth.
SPEAKER_03If they're just seeding seagrass, what are they primarily using those whiskers for? Is it just so they don't bump into stuff like a cat?
SPEAKER_01Okay. Now it depends on on which bit. So the ones on the muzzle they are using to find seagrass, but the ones on their body, some people think it's a bit like a lateral line in a fish.
SPEAKER_03Yep, I gotcha.
SPEAKER_01They are getting all sorts of information from that. And when people have studied the brains of their cousins, the manatees, they find a huge part of the brain which is about getting information from feelings. So that's probably that whole sense of feeling in part is really, really important to them.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, wow.
SPEAKER_00Anyone who's been on social media might know about a famous baby hippo, Moo Dang. Have you seen him? Him or her, sorry. Can't remember if it's male or female, it's famous, went viral on the internet for being the most adorable little roly-poly.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's pretty cute.
SPEAKER_00Baby hippo. But when I saw a picture of some scientists holding a baby Jugong for research purposes, please please listeners don't go picking up baby ju gongs.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, let's not do that.
SPEAKER_00But I saw some researchers holding a baby jugong so they could, you know, release it into the wild or whatever, and it was so adorable. Yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_03They don't look real, do they?
SPEAKER_00It was just like a little potato, like a big potato.
SPEAKER_03With whiskers.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Super cute. Absolutely. But besides being completely adorable,
Why Are Dugongs Important?
SPEAKER_00why is it important to protect Jugongs? What's important about them?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think there's two sorts of i importance, or maybe three. Uh the first one is they're culturally very significant to people, particularly indigenous people, throughout their range. And in some places that cultural link goes back many thousands of years. The second one is that they're ecosystem engineers and they help maintain healthy seagrowth beds in areas where they occur and and dig up seagrowth.
SPEAKER_03They're good gardeners, aren't they?
SPEAKER_01They're very good gardeners.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, which creates regrowth, which provides that for the other animals, so they're they're right at the top.
SPEAKER_01And I think the third reason, uh which you might think is a bit of a geeky reason, is that they're a really important part of if you like the tree of life, they're the only member of a family called the Dugongidae, and they're only one of four members of the order, Cyrenia or sea cow. So if you lose the Dugong, it's a bit like chopping off a limb from a tree.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it would be like losing our elephants.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's not even worth thinking about.
Aeroplanes and Rodeos: How to Track Dugongs
SPEAKER_00Professor Marsh, I understand you work with Dr. Christoph Plager, who leads the fieldwork on Ju Gongs. And we know it is his mission to find the dugongs and figure out how many there are and where they live, which is probably easier said than done because you can't just knock on their door and ask them to fill out a census form. So, Professor Marsh, can you sort of explain how he and the other researchers do it? How do they go and find out how many Jew Gongs there are and how do they find them?
SPEAKER_01Okay, well, the basic technique actually I invented and developed a long time ago in the 1980s, which was to use aerial surveys at a very large spatial scale, and we used human observers and we did some fancy mathematics, which got increasingly fancy, to calculate the dugongs that people couldn't see because of in turbid water. What Chris has done is he's continued some of those man surveys. They're very nerve-wracking to do. I've decided I've done enough. Uh but now Chris is developing techniques using cameras and AI which will improve the uh technique and be a lot less risky for people because we've flown, you know, small light aircraft, sometimes quite a way uh off land, depending on where, in areas where there's a lot of shallow water, particularly, say, the northern Great Barrier Reef and Torres Strait. And we've been very lucky. We haven't had aircraft accidents, but you wonder how many how many lives you've got um doing that.
SPEAKER_00Oh, so you you you got some thrills hanging out of helicopters looking for geo gons?
SPEAKER_01Uh no, mainly we've used uh fixed wing aircraft. People have used helicopters in some parts of the world, but it's they're very expensive and uh they don't have the same uh endurance as fixed-wing aircraft. But yes, uh it is, you know, it's it's dangerous work because you're flying low over water. So I think what Chris is doing is really important because the detectability will be better. I think they've got AI now that's trained that's uh at least as good and perhaps a bit better than human observers, and also it's much safer.
SPEAKER_03I actually watched that YouTube video that you sent you passed on. He's using drones now, right?
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_03Off launching them off the ship.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I think it's amazing, Professor Marsh, that you put your life potentially on the line for the Jugongs, you know, zooming around.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I'm sure they appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00Trying to count them. AI, it's not quite there yet, I think, because online someone said that they posted a picture of their seal that they were rehabilitating, and Instagram blocked it and said we've detected a naked or naked person.
SPEAKER_03Imagine what they're gonna say when they see a photo of a Jugong. What's what's old Chat GPT gonna come up with? Mermaids are real. Mermaids need a shave.
SPEAKER_01No, I think this two sorts of surveys using drones. There's fairly local surveys using small drones, and lots of people are doing that all over the world. And then there are replicates, I guess, of our very large-scale surveys, which you can't just use a small drone for that. And that will eventually be done by large drones. At the moment, what Chris has been doing is using cameras from fixed-wing aircraft travelling slow and then taking, you know, thousands of photos, and then using uh AI to detect Ugongs, and that's been a a huge amount of work and perfecting those techniques and also not throwing the baby out with the bathwater because of course we've got all this historical information that was collected using human observers.
SPEAKER_00A different video that I watched about Dr. Klager's research in the field saw him and other scientists jumping in the water with Jugongs. It must be a and then having them up the side of the boat. Yeah, it must be a bit of an experience.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So another thing that we've been doing for a long time and that Chris is continuing is satellite tracking Jugongs. And uh that involves catching them and attaching satellite transmitters to see where they go. And that's been very important because what we found is that some Jugongs don't go very far and come in and out with the tide, and other Jugongs and we don't really understand this, can make quite long trips both there and back.
SPEAKER_00The adventurous one.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and you know, why are they doing it?
SPEAKER_03Would that be well, what are the mating habits of these things? Are they moving out to try and find a mate? Is that why they're moving long distances?
SPEAKER_01Well, we're not sure about that because some uh both males and females do it, including females with calves. I think that part of it is because seagrass beds can get quite damaged by extreme weather events and the animals have to move to greener pastures and find somewhere else to eat. And I think that animals have these mental maps of where they can find alternative sources of food, and maybe they go and check them out occasionally. But really, we don't know why they do that. We certainly know that dugongs need to eat a lot, and if their seagrass beds are damaged, they either have to move or some of them stay around and starve and die, which is not a great strategy, but most of them move.
SPEAKER_00It was incredible seeing the video of the researchers handling the dugongs so they can satellite target because you've got to remember these animals can weigh more than half a ton.
SPEAKER_03Have you ever done any of that, like they pull them up to the side of the boat and tag them and do all the stuff they need to them? Does rolling them on the back work the same as sharks?
SPEAKER_01I've done a bit of it, but I want to say that I've never caught a dugong using a rodeo technique. I think you need to be a bit bigger and stronger than I am.
SPEAKER_00So you're suggesting that that's what Chris does? He uses uh let's say rodeo manatees. Oh rodeo as in having to jump on it back.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, people do that, but they also use nets to catch manatees. But nets haven't really been used to catch dugongs, it's been seen to be too dangerous. But the technique that's been developed was adapted actually from the rodeo technique developed to catch turtles.
SPEAKER_00Oh, wow, okay. So don't try this at home, folks. This is only for researchers because it's no jumping on animals, please. If it's done inexpertly, I'm sure it's just unnecessary stress the animal, but in your case, you guys are getting valuable data about how to protect them. So did you find out around about how many dugongs are there in Australia and on the Great Barrier Reef?
SPEAKER_01Okay, the overall estimate for Australia, if you add up all the aerial survey estimates, comes to about 165,000, which makes Australia by far the Dugong capital of the world. In the Great Barrier Reef, there's probably about 10,000, 9 or 10, and the numbers in the northern Great Barrier Reef, north of Cooktown, are much greater than further south, but there's a lot more seagrass as well.
SPEAKER_00So down the Brisbane end of the coast there's less dugongs, and there's more in the north. Would that be up in the Gulf?
SPEAKER_01And there are quite a lot in the Gulf. And there are quite a lot actually in southeast Queensland, in Morton Bay and Harvey Bay, and Morton Bay is a very good place for Jewgongs, and it's a special place because there are animals close to a major city in fairly clear water.
SPEAKER_00Wow, amazing. So uh how healthy are the Jewgongs that you're commonly coming across in our waters?
SPEAKER_01Usually they're in pretty good condition unless the seagrass has been uh damaged by extreme weather events. But Chris and I and others have a student who's looking at whether you can look at how healthy a Jugog is, how fat it is from drone photography. And there are other people that have working on that too in other parts of the world, but it will be very good if people can make essentially uh remote health assessments. The other thing that we think about when we think about how healthy Jugongs are is their genetic health. And in Australia, I want to say that the Jugongs are genetically pretty healthy, but there are some other parts of the world where the genetic diversity is a lot less.
How Endangered Are Dugongs Globally?
SPEAKER_00Professor Marsh, last year you sovers a major global assessment of Jugong status and conservation needs. That's the global Jugong population. Can you tell us briefly about that report and what its key findings were?
SPEAKER_01Well, that report was the work of a team of 70 scientists from throughout the Jugongs range, and it was my job to lead the group, but I want to emphasize the very important contributions that we got from everyone else. It was the sort of thing that you couldn't do on your own. So what did we learn? We learned that Australia is the lucky country when it comes to Jugong. We have a lot of Jugong habitats because we have a very wide continental shelf in the north, so we have a lot of shallow water. And of course, the other thing is, you know, we're a rich country and we have a relatively low human population density in most of the Jugong's range. The challenges are very different from many other countries. Uh, there are more than 40 of them. We're not exactly sure how many because there are some places where we think there should be Dugongs where there's no data. Uh, and the populations there are uh everywhere else are much smaller. And the challenges for conservation are much greater because uh people are poor and the countries don't have the same amount of money to invest in conservation. So, for example, in the Great Barrier Reef, from the middle of next year there will be no gill nets, and which is a sort of net that's quite too long.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But eliminating gill nets In many other countries will be super hard because we have fishermen who are very poor and need the income to feed their families.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's I think that's why foreign aid from the developed countries to the developing countries is really important because it's not just helping humans that's uh which is extremely important, but then if if humans have better social security safety nets, then they're less reliant on these unsustainable practices.
SPEAKER_03I just having a look at the uh different IUCN red list status around the world, that big report, that was incredible to see the mass differences in that.
SPEAKER_01It is, isn't it? And and to realise what a huge challenge. And you know, since that report was written, we talked about the fact that there were a number of countries which were at war, and of course, the number of countries affected by war in the Jugongs range has just gone up with the situation in in the in the Arabian Gulf.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well I I definitely wanted to ask you about
Dugongs in the Strait of Hormuz: War in Iran's Impacts
SPEAKER_00that. I've read that Dugongs can be found in huge herds, especially in the southern Arabian Gulf. That's right next to the Strait of Hormuz, which has been in the news a lot lately.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, look at Jugongs.
SPEAKER_00I have to ask, are they at risk from Donald Trump's war with Iran?
SPEAKER_01I'm not sure. I mean I think I think there are two big issues. The first one is if there are oil spills, so far there haven't been that I know of, but if we start getting, you know, oil tankers hit and there are oil spills that would be disastrous for marine life in the Gulf. The second one is that really understanding the situation in the Gulf requires a lot of regional cooperation between all the various countries and they've got better things to think about at the moment as you know, more challenging things. And I I'll give you an example. There was supposed to be an international conference on seagrasses in the UAE at the end of this year, and it's being postponed because of the war. So those Arabian Gulf countries are are rich countries and they're very proud of their duvongs, particularly the UAE, but you can see that challenges of field work, etc., are much greater, are very great at the moment. And one of the things I learned from the report was that there was very little had been done in Iran, and we needed to know a lot more, and of course that won't be happening now.
SPEAKER_00Right, so to sum up the major global assessment of Jugong status, from what I saw from it, the Jigong population is vulnerable in general to extinction, but in some key areas it's at a higher level of endangered, depending on on the area. So let's dive into a bit more the threats of
Dugongs vs Gill Nets and Shark Nets
SPEAKER_00Jugongs. So you mentioned that the biggest threat to Gigongs is entanglement in fishing nets. Just for any listeners who aren't familiar, what is a gill net and why do Gigongs always get stuck in them?
SPEAKER_01Okay, well, I want to say by the way, that now there are very few gill nets left in the Great Barrier Reef and none north of Cooktown. And as I said, the Australian government has made a commitment that there won't be any more after the middle of next year. So a gill net is a net in the water which is designed to catch fish by the gills. But it can catch megafauna as well, and it's a very simple sort of net and cheap, and that's why uh FAO subsidized them to be used in developing countries all over the world from the nineteen sixties, with the best of intentions, of course, because this was trying to feed people, but as I said, they have this unintended consequence. And in Queensland a lot of attention came from the shark nets set for bather protection, which are a type of gill net, and they're a bit different from commercial gill nets because they were in the water all the time in most parts of you know, there were sixty-two different beaches in Queensland with those nets, and they were obviously designed to reduce the population of sharks, which they did. But the shark nets kept very good records. So we were able to analyse those records and show a drastic decline in the catch-per-unit effort of Jugong over time. And I'm very pleased to say now that actually shark nets have been removed from Great Valley Reef Marine Park. There aren't any, there are a couple in the region near Mackay, but not in the marine park. But of course they've been replaced by drum lines, which still catch sharks and they don't catch stewgongs, but there is other bycatch of concern. I think actually doing something about sharks is a very tough problem because obviously no one wants to be eaten by a shark. But I want to say when I think about sharks and what to do about it, I'm glad I'm a scientist, not a policy maker.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's a tough one.
The Dugong Wars
SPEAKER_00Let's talk about some history. I understand back in the 90s there was a conflict here in Queensland known as the Jugong Wars. You know, if any listeners Oh yeah, I heard about that. If any listeners are imagining Jugongs carrying out underwater spy operations and launching tools, missile launches and yeah, they're they're crazy little buggers. That's actually not what I'm talking about, though, Professor Marsh. What were the Jugong Wars?
SPEAKER_01Oh, well, the conservation NGOs in particular were deeply concerned about Jugongs being caught in Gilnets. As a scientist, I was too. But the fishermen didn't want the number of licenses reduced and they didn't want areas being closed, and the war was really about that.
SPEAKER_00A war of words.
SPEAKER_01It was a war of words, a war of, you know, newspaper headlines and articles, and things did get pretty nasty actually. At one point I woke I'd been in out in the field doing an aerial survey and I came back and I remember it was a Sunday and I opened up my email and there was an email from the Director General of the International Union of Conservation of Nature saying that there had been a formal complaint about me and it turned out to be somebody who was uh connected with the fishing industry, actually paid by them, uh, alleging that I'd made all this stuff up. And you know, uh and I got a few and there was also a website and you know, there was no social media then but saying terrible things about me, and in the end I got a lawyer to send a letter saying, please desist because you know we weren't gonna have the money to take it to court or anything. But and uh and they did desist. But it was a hard time to be a Duvong researcher, and there were uh fishermen who weren't very happy at all.
SPEAKER_00Hmm, I can imagine it would have been difficult. I think for scientists it takes a lot of bravery to speak out about things sometimes. For example, uh nowadays on climate change as well, when you know that there are many interests who might not like certain science being talked about. So I think it was brave that you stood up for JGongs despite, you know, some of that backlash. And in the end, it was the right thing to do and it succeeded because it led to the introduction of, I believe, Dugong protected areas. What are those and how does that work?
SPEAKER_01Okay, Dugong protected areas were introduced under fishing legislation to either reduce or ban the use of gill nets in areas which were important to Dugongs. Then in 2003, we had the rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef with lots of green zones where commercial fishing and recreational fishing was banned, and then yellow zones where commercial fishing was banned. And so there has been amazing improvements, I think, in protecting dugongs and other megafauna from commercial fishing, but there is still concern over some highly protected species, which is why the Australian government made a commitment to the UNESCO Heritage Centre to remove them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. There was pressure from the World Heritage Committee because there were still some Gill nets. I think all your work going back to the 90s really helped Professor Marsh and it got rid of a lot of the Gill nets, but there were still some left, including in the Cairns and Port Douglas regions, which are so dependent on tourism. And so to know that sharks and things that tourists come from all over the world to see we're still or could be right now, still be getting accidentally caught in those nets is a bit sad. 2027 is the deadline that has been set for those to be closed down, and that's going to be a step forward for those Dugons.
SPEAKER_03Well, we've got the humpback superhighway in the winter too. You know, turtles, baby humpbacks, minkeys, everything. It's just they just need to go, just get rid of them all.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I don't think uh a whale could get caught in a gill net exactly because it's probably too big.
SPEAKER_03They get entangled in them though.
SPEAKER_00Do they? Okay.
SPEAKER_01They can get entangled. And of course, whales do get caught in shark nets in the south of the Queensland. I mean, I want to say these problems are very tough for policymakers. Very tough. But they are easier in Australia than they are in, say, India. I mean the area between the south of India and uh Sri Lanka was an important Yugong area, much smaller than areas in Australia. And there I found in in the report that there were something like, you know, 900 Gilneths and another 1,300 vessels whose fishing gear could damage seagrass. And these are very, very poor people. And so it's a totally different problem.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, another thing that has helped a lot in some fishing dependent countries is transitioning some of the fisher people to tourism so they can have an income from showing people the beautiful ocean instead of fishing it. So there are solutions out there, but like you say, it is a very tricky, tricky issue and people need to be involved in it as well as
Dugong Tourism
SPEAKER_00animals.
SPEAKER_03Is there any dedicated Jugong watching boats? Like is that would that be something to help with education, like getting people out on boats and I'd be on it. I'd be there. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It depends on where. There are some in Shark Bay, in the World Heritage Area, in uh Western Australia where the water's pretty clear. Uh in parts of the Red Sea in Egypt where the water's very clear, they take people out to see Jugongs, but then you see hundreds of people, snorkelers and divers kind of chasing Jugongs, which isn't great.
SPEAKER_00Uh no, don't chase them, folks. If you see one, just be chilled.
SPEAKER_01You know, not every Jugong habitat's going to turn into a tourist attraction, particularly very turbid places. But one of the places that is amazing is a bay in Mozambique, which is a bit like Morton Bay without Brisbane, if you could imagine it. And there the Jugong population is managed by African Parks, and they have an arrangement with the Mozambique government that significant proportion of the tourism income has to go back to the local communities. And that has been very successful.
SPEAKER_00Well, that is a perfect example of what I was trying to say about getting the people into ecotourism instead of fishing where possible is an amazing win-win solution. This
Dugongs vs Climate Change
SPEAKER_00is where we ran out of time for our live radio interview. But I called Professor Marsh back a few days later to continue the conversation. I'm going to sum up a few things before going back into the rest of the interview. Professor Marsh explained that extreme weather events can be devastating to the seagrassbirds that do guns rely on their food. So any event which wipes out huge areas of seagrass is probably going to have an impact. That's why it's so concerning that climate change has been causing more frequent severe cyclones over roots of decades. The impacts vary depending on the cyberflies. But cyclones can tear up vast areas of seagrass by the fruit and wash all the seeds away, making recovery extremely difficult. In 2011, which was disastrous for vast areas of seagrass. But if the sediment dumps by the flood into the ocean, it's made to state seagrass out. And if the flooding is happening repeatedly for several years in a row, it's even harder for the seagrass to recover. If an extreme weather event only impacts a small area of seagrass, dugons can simply migrate to greener pastures. But with severe weather events becoming more frequent and widespread, those pastures are becoming fewer and further between.
Early Settlers and the Dugong Oil Trade
SPEAKER_01So um you could buy Jugong oil in some chemist shops in Brisbane as late as the 1960s, I think. I think it was finally banned in 1967.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Right next to the snake oil, I suppose. And what was it prescribed for?
SPEAKER_01Oh, well, general health. I mean, people used to take cod liver oil. I don't know if you ever heard about that.
SPEAKER_00Well, you can still get cod liver oil from the chemist, I believe.
SPEAKER_01Okay, and and so jugong oil was often used as a substitute for cod liver oil, and uh some indigenous people still believe that jugong oil is very important, medicine, and good to rub on the skin and etc. But uh in Morton Bay near Brisbane there was quite a sort of cottage industry for Jugong oil, and it was even shown at the London exhibition in the middle of the eighteenth century as this extraordinary cure oil. And I have a quote which I think was 1870 by a guy called Patterson, and he said something like this of all the resources of the great state of Queensland, none is more valuable than the flops of Jugong that abound along her shores. And there was a Joe Gong oil industry in Harvey Bay, there were a few other places along the Great Barrier Reef, and also the Starkey River north of Hopevale, and so it was a cottage industry, it wasn't a great big industry, but it certainly would have had an impact.
Dugongs and Traditional Owners
SPEAKER_00Does traditional hunting pose a significant threat to Jugong populations, or would you say it's more the European introduced threats, like we've talked about the gill net and climate change from modern industrialization?
SPEAKER_01Oh, I think that it's much more the latter. I think people used to be very worried about indigenous hunting, but indigenous hunting is a native title right, and traditional owners, as you said, want to keep it sustainable, they want there to be Jongongs for their children, and they are very, very important in caring for the country and looking after it.
SPEAKER_00What role do traditional owners play in protecting Jigongs?
SPEAKER_01Very important roles. So Jugongs are an incredibly high cultural value to First Nations people throughout their range and particularly in Australia. And I think some First Nations people have developed hunting management plans and things like that. And I've found that First Nations people are deeply concerned about the other impacts on their Dugongs and are very anxious to see the other impacts addressed. So I think that actually working with First Nations people to understand how they can assist and also how their indigenous knowledge can work together with Western science to come up with robust management strategies. And I think we're getting a bit better at that. And you know, I'm very encouraged to see how First Nations people are getting increasingly involved across the north in caring for their country, and I think that the range of programs are really, really, really important and are getting more sophisticated, yes. So I I definitely think working with them is central to a resilient Jugong conservation strategy.
Highlights, Lowlights, and What Gives You Hope
SPEAKER_00What would you say is the best part of your job?
SPEAKER_01Oh well, the best part of my job when I was doing lost field work was going to absolutely amazing and beautiful places and seeing Dugongs from the air. That was just amazing. And and then of course I've been very privileged to have travelled and talked to traditional owners and Dugong researchers at many, many places in their range. So I've been to fantastic places. And that's what I like the most.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. Well, everyone's jealous. Hopefully, you inspired some more people out there to become scientists. I hope so. What is the saddest or hardest part of your job?
SPEAKER_01Oh, the hardest part of my job was when I first started studying Jugongs, most of the animals I saw were dead. Because they were I mean, Townsville's a very, very good Jugong place because there's very good a lot of seagrass in Townsville. So Townsville's one of the most important Jugong places on the urban coast of the Great Barri Reef region. There are more important places on the Cape York coast, but Townsville's very good. And there were shark nets for beta protection and gill nets, and so I used to go out and have to do neuropsies on dead animals, and that was very sad indeed. Awful.
SPEAKER_00Wow, well, I can only imagine how glad you must be after all these years to know that the gill nets are being phased out next year.
SPEAKER_01And also the shark nets have been removed from virtually the whole Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. I think there are only two left round Mackay in not particularly important Julong areas. So that's been a big change, an amazing change. But of course, there are still drum lines that catch sharks, and I hope we can move to much more sophisticated ways of reducing the risk of shark attack. I think I said this to you before. When I think about the whole question of managing the risk to people from shark attack, I'm glad I'm just a scientist and not a policymaker. A pretty tough challenge.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, there has been some research on drum lines that they they may not be effective at protecting humans anyway.
SPEAKER_01So But they certainly catch a lot of sharks, and many of the sharks that they catch are not a danger to humans at all. So it's a very tough question and very complicated, and I don't see uh a quick answer in Queensland, but they are looking at trying to find answers.
SPEAKER_02So good luck.
SPEAKER_00Last question, what gives you hope?
SPEAKER_01Well, I guess people are very creative, and I hope that we can address some of these issues. The problem is, of course, that we're much better at solving things that have short-term solutions than things with long-term solutions, and I'm afraid that some of the challenges we face with regard to climate change are going to require sustained and long-term solutions, which is politically very difficult.
SPEAKER_00What can the listeners out there do to help protect Jugongs, even if it's making changes in their own life to lessen their impact on the ocean?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think the whole question of plastic on the ocean is something that people can really think about and the disposal of plastic. There hasn't been a lot of work done on plastic and jugongs. We do know that a calf became very famous in Thailand, died from plastic, but uh in general I don't think we know. But there are so many uh marine megafauna where plastic is concerned, particularly turtles. I think we all should be reducing our use of plastic and also making sure it doesn't go into the sea.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Excellent. Sadly, that's all we have time for today. James Cook University Jigong Expert, Emeritus Professor of Environmental Science, Elaine Marsh. Thanks for your amazing work and thanks for joining us on Word on the Reef. It's a pleasure.
SPEAKER_03Have a great week.
