Seagrass Giants: What Dugongs Teach Us About Conservation's Fragile Web

There is a quiet ecological crisis unfolding along Thailand’s Andaman coast. Dugongs are reclusive marine herbivores, kin to manatees, who are dying in unsettling numbers. Once emblematic of Trang’s coastal identity, they are now surfacing starved and with their rib cages collapsed. Notably, this is owed to habitat collapse.

Between 2020 and 2024, up to 70% of Thailand’s seagrass meadows vanished due to coastal development, sediment runoff, and increasingly erratic tides prompted by climate change. These underwater meadows, once dense with life, have been reduced to sterile sand. Dugongs, obligate grazers of seagrass, are thus left adrift in the remnants of what once was.

                                   

As a consequence, they have begun migrating into unfamiliar and—most importantly—dangerous zones, confronted with the risk of boat collisions and entanglement by fishing gear. Their altered behavior exemplifies that of primates driven to crop-raiding or roadside scavenging—not by want, but by ecological coercion. Displacement such as this re-emphasizes the cascading effects of habitat degradation across taxa.

In addition, the dugong’s decline is the result not of a single disturbance, but a confluence of synergistic stressors. Stressors such as increasing sea temperatures, intensified rainfall, and coastal pollution meet to destabilize marine ecosystems—much like how climate perturbations, human encroachment, and poaching intersect in terrestrial habitats. The parallels between marine and primate conservation illuminate a sobering truth: ecosystemic fracture can happen not gradually, but all at once.


Amid the loss, however, a form of grassroots resilience has come about. Thai researchers, local volunteers, and policymakers are piloting drone monitoring, necropsy analysis, and seagrass reseeding. In Phuket, communities now revere the presence of dugongs in recovering beds. These efforts reflect community-based conservation strategies employed in primate habitats, which amplifies the understanding that restoration necessitates the marriage of both ecological and cultural stewardship.

The case of the dugongs is not merely an “unfortunate” product of discrete happenstance. It is a metonym for the precariousness of ecological interdependence. Whether in seagrass or rainforest, the loss of one species signals the weakening of an entire web. Thus, it serves as a vital reminder that conservation is less about preservation and more about the maintenance of delicate relationships.




Cowan, Carolyn. "Dugong Numbers Plummet amid Seagrass Decline in Thailand’s Andaman Sea." Mongabay, 10 Apr. 2025, https://news.mongabay.com/2025/04/dugong-numbers-plummet-amid-seagrass-decline-in-thailands-andaman-sea/.


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