dugong
BANGKOK: A herd of 30 dugongs have been recorded in a video clip as they swam around Koh Muk in the Andaman Sea.
The island is part of the Hat Chao Mai National Park located off the west coast of Trang province in the south of Thailand.
The video was posted on June 5 on the Facebook page of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, which said that it is the biggest herd of dugongs ever spotted in the area.
The department said park officials have been surveying the population of marine mammals, as well as their habitat around Koh Muk and Yong Lam Beach, which used to be abundant in seagrass that serves as their food.
In March, the department reported that the dugong population in Trang province is on the brink of extinction as the population has dropped drastically from 194 in 2023 to just 36 in 2024.
This prompted Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Phatcharavat Wongsuwan to order related agencies to come up with measures to prevent the dugong’s extinction by tackling the causes, which include the destruction of seagrass and the spread of plastic waste to the sea that the animals were eating and subsequently dying.
The department added that it used flying drones to check the dugong population in the national park and found that some 30 of them lived in the north-eastern part of Koh Muk.
The department vowed to continue studying the herd without disturbing them to find ways to help preserve and increase the population of dugongs in Trang waters. - The Nation/ANN
