On July 21 this year, the Yangtze River paddlefish, known as the king of freshwater fish in China, was officially declared extinct by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. This is sad. Just a month later, another species was declared "extinct", this was the dugong .
Speaking of this name, you may not be familiar with it. In fact, it is the prototype of the "mermaid" in the fairy tale. Dugongs are manatee-like mammals. Because they mainly live about 20 meters from the coastline, they must surface every few minutes to breathe. In addition, the ancients could not see clearly from a distance, so they would mistakenly think that they were people in the sea, so they associated them with the legendary life of mermaids.
The dugong's body is spindle-shaped. It can grow up to 3 meters long and weigh between 300 and 500 kilograms as an adult. Dugong is a very gentle and timid animal. Its main food is plants growing on the seabed, including roots, stems, leaves of marine plants and various algae . It can eat more than 45 kilograms of food every day. They can feed at any time, but in areas with human activity they feed mainly at night.
They mainly live in coastal countries and islands in the Indian Ocean and the tropical and subtropical western Pacific, between 27° north and south latitude, around the coastlines of at least 37 countries, including China, Japan, India, Madagascar and Australia. Dugongs are distributed.
Dugong has high economic value. Its fat can be used to refine oil, its skin can be used to make leather, and its bones can be used to make crafts. This makes it a target of human concern and is hunted in large numbers. In addition, dugongs eat almost exclusively seagrass on the seabed, and seagrass near the coastline is easily destroyed by humans, which is another blow to them. In addition, the deterioration of the marine environment, severe pollution and imminent extinction are inevitable.
According to a recent paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, dugongs have not been seen in Chinese waters since 2008 (the carcass was discovered in 2008). Although our country has adopted laws and other measures to protect them, the protection measures came a little late and ultimately failed to save their fate.
Dr. Heidi Ma of the Institute of Zoology of the Zoological Society of London also visited several provinces along the South China Sea and collected dugong sighting records. The results were not optimistic. Professor Samuel Turvey, the paper's lead author and a researcher at the institute, noted that after combining many studies, China's dugongs are functionally extinct.
What is called functional extinction is not exactly the same as what we usually call extinction. This does not mean that dugongs have completely disappeared, but there are not enough dugongs left in the wild to return to normal numbers.
In addition, there is a geographical scope, that is, within our country. While dugong populations are declining dramatically in many parts of the world, Australia's dugong populations remain relatively abundant. However, dugongs can only live near the coastline, so it is difficult for them to cross the ocean and reach Chinese waters to help their counterparts here restore their populations.
