A ‘Sea Cow’ That Evoked Mermaids Is Extinct in Chinese Waters, Study Finds

The dugong, a species of sea cow that roams the ocean floor in Asia and Africa, has been seen off the coast of China for hundreds of years.

Not recently. The dugong has become functionally extinct in China's coastal waters due to a rapid population collapse in the mid-1970s.

Even if some dugongs are still alive off China's coast, their numbers are too small to sustain a viable population. The seagrass that Dugongs eat in the South China Sea's northern reaches has degraded over time.

The study in the journal Royal Society Open Science, based on interviews with nearly 800 fishermen in southern China, is a cautionary tale for other mammals in the South China Sea.

There are 100,000 dugongs living in the waters off around 40 countries, but the recent findings do not bode well for other populations of the animal in Japan and Southeast Asia.

Professor Marsh said by phone on Friday that it was a sad story and a salutary one. It won't be the last place where people can conclude that dugongs are functionally extinct.

Around 54 million to 34 million years ago, marine mammals, including dugongs, began to evolve in the shallow sea stretching from the Pacific to the Mediterranean.

The dugong and three other species of manatees are part of the Sirenia. The dugong is the only one of the four that doesn't live in the ocean. The only fully vegetarian marine mammal is this one.

The stories of mystical creatures have been inspired by sirens. The sirens of Homer's "Odyssey" are thought to lure sailors with magic properties. The Tethys Sea was named after a sea goddess from Greek mythology.

There used to be more than one dugong species that could be found in the Western Atlantic and Caribbean. Steller's sea cow was a source of food for 18th century hunters and explorers in the North Pacific, but it was declared extinct 27 years after it was discovered.

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Professor Marsh said that Australia has the world's largest population of dugongs due to an enormous, sparse coast. There wasn't as much seagrass in the first place so the population off southern China never really grew.

The dugong may be gone from China's coast forever, joining the other species that have vanished from the country's rivers and seas. The rapid collapse of China's dugong population since 1975 was described as a sobering reminder that local extinction can happen in a very short time.

The study is based on interviews with 788 fishermen along the southern China coastline. Three dugongs were reported over the previous five years.

There were 257 dugongs that were hunted for food in China between 1959 and 1976. There were no verified field observations of dugongs after 2000.

The population of dugongs may have survived off the country's southern coast, but continued degradation of coastal resources in the South China Sea makes the prospects of a population recovery unlikely.

Songhai Li, one of the authors at the Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering in China, referred questions to Samuel Turvey. He didn't reply to the request.

A marine ecologist in Malaysia who has studied dugongs said that the study was limited due to the large amount of interviews used. He said that it was better to include the evidence of the species' absence.

Professor Marsh said she didn't see any problems with the study's methodology. She said that it was possible that there was a low number of animals there. Their conclusions are quite strong.

Gabriel Grimsditch is the program management officer for dugongs at the United Nations Environment Program.

There are healthy populations in Australia and the Persian Gulf. The extinction threat they face across their range has been highlighted by a study from China.