Coming up, Jonathan travels to the Philippines in a search for the elusive Dugong!
Welcome to Jonathan Bird’s Blue World!
In the waters of Florida and the Caribbean, there exists a gentle marine mammal called
a manatee.
Because they often live inshore--close to people--and have enjoyed more than 40 years
of protection from hunting or harassment, manatees are often quite friendly.
Many of them have become acclimated to gentle interactions with people.
DUGONG But the manatee has a wild cousin, called
a Dugong, living far away, in the Indo-Pacific Ocean.
This animal is still hunted in much of its range.
It’s shy and hard to approach.
Wary of humans.
And exceptionally rare to see underwater.
Which is why I have come to the Philippines, one of a handful of places in the world, where
there are enough dugongs left to have a chance of seeing one in the wild!
I’m heading to Busuanga, in Palawan, Philippines, a remote and beautiful area where the endangered
dugong still roams wild.
But I didn’t come alone.
Award-winning IMAX filmmaking team Howard and Michele Hall have joined me on this trip.
They have been here before, and agreed to give me a hand with this daunting and challenging
assignment.
Our journey begins with a flight from the capital city of Manila down to Busuanga, then
a drive from the local airport to the water.
Next we take a ferry ride across the bay to our home-away-from-home, El Rio Y Mar Resort,
on the north side of Busuanga.
We arrive just after sunset in time for dinner.
The next morning, we awake to fog in the nearby hills, and our dive boat, a traditional Philippino
Bangka, ready to go.
We get our gear together and load the boat.
It’s going to be a long day.
Good morning!
In the experienced hands of captains Benny Martinez and Wilmar Bansilan, we set out on
our first day of adventure.
Dugongs are wild animals that roam the ocean freely, and it’s a big ocean.
But we know where they saw dugongs recently, so at least we know where to start looking.
Unfortunately that spot is two hours away!
Since it’s going to be a while, Howard and Michele do the only logical thing: take a
nap!
I’ve never been here before, so I spend some time watching the scenery go by.
I am always amazed by the natural beauty of the Philippines—lush, green hills surrounded
by beautiful warm water filled with untold species of animals to be discovered and filmed!
Eventually we make it to the area where some dugongs were last seen, and we start looking.
With experienced eyes, divemasters Omar Linsangan and Bryan Deramas begin scanning the surface
of the water.
Dugongs are solitary animals, so they are looking for just one.
It’s like finding a needle in a haystack.
After driving around looking for an hour, at last, we spot a dugong!
There is no time to waste in suiting up and getting into the water.
We don’t really need to make a stealthy water entry because we are anchored really
far from the dugong.
We will swim several hundred yards to reach the dugong because the boat spooks them.
We follow Bryan for a few minutes, looking around carefully in anticipation of finding
the dugong!
Finally we find it, and Howard takes the lead, sneaking up on her, while she’s sleeping.
The master at work.
The dugong is covered in remoras, suction-cup equipped fish that hang around larger animals
for scraps.
But why are there so many around this dugong?
Michele films from above for a shot of me and Howard inching closer and closer to the
dugong, hoping it will tolerate our presence.
But when the dugong wakes up and finds two cameras in its face, the scene is over as
it swims away.
This is definitely going to be more work than filming manatees in Florida!
With Howard and Michele leading, we head back to the boat.
With the light fading, it’s time to head for home.
Back at the resort, we enjoy a beautiful Philippines sunset and get a good night’s sleep.
The next morning, we’re heading back, cameras at the ready.
We find a dugong quickly this time, so we get suited up and into the water as fast as
we can.
Today is nice and sunny, and the water is a little clearer on an incoming tide.
Omar leads us to the dugong and this time we get lucky.
The dugong is actively feeding, and fortunately he is more interested in food than us, so
as I sneak up close for some shots, he doesn’t seem to mind.
Like manatees, dugongs are herbivores—they eat only plants.
And their favorite plants to eat are sea grasses that grow in the sandy sea floor in shallow
water where there is plenty of light.
While there is no shortage of this aquatic salad for dugongs to eat, it’s not exactly
dense in nutritional value.
So dugongs need to spend more than half their lives chomping away at sea grasses, and packing
in nearly 100 pounds of it a day.
Dugongs and manatees are in fact the only completely herbivorous marine mammals.
So, in spite of reaching the length and weight of a small car, dugongs are completely harmless.
A school of Golden trevally are hanging around because as the dugong feeds, he scares up
shrimp and other creatures hiding in the sand.
It’s an easy feast for the fish.
The dugong also has those other freeloaders…more than a dozen remoras are hanging onto him
and following along.
They must drive the poor dugong absolutely crazy, because every once in a while he engages
in an elaborate ritual to try to rid himself of some of them.
It starts with some acrobatics—rolling and twisting in the sand.
The acrobatics kicks up a bunch of silt and reduces the visibility to near zero in a giant
cloud around the dugong.
Once the dust cloud reaches epic proportions, he shoots out of the cloud and zooms away
at up to 15 miles per hour (which is actually pretty fast underwater) and literally leaves
the remoras in the dust!
Unfortunately, the remoras always seem to catch up again.
I keep watching because I really want to know why so many remoras hang around.
What is their interest in the dugong?
Then I see it, and it’s pretty disgusting.
The remoras eat the dugong’s poop.
Dugongs eat a lot, so they poop a lot.
For the remoras, the dugong is like a swimming poop vending machine.
If you are what you eat, that explains why even sharks won’t eat remoras!
Like dolphins and whales, dugongs are mammals.
Their ancient ancestors once lived on land.
But in spite of their similarity to whales, dugongs and manatees are more closely related
to elephants.
Since they’re mammals, they must rise to the surface to breathe every few minutes.
While the dugong can hold its breath for 15 minutes, they tend to breathe much more frequently
than that--every 3-6 minutes.
In spite of their similarity, dugongs and manatees have one striking difference.
The tail of a dugong looks like the fluke of a whale or a dolphin.
A manatee on the other hand, has a rounded, paddle-like tail.
While the manatee lives around the Caribbean, the dugong has a huge range spreading across
the tropical Pacific and Indian oceans, all the way up into the Red Sea and Arabian gulf.
The dugong is highly endangered in its entire range, but the strongest holdouts of stable
populations are in northern Australia and the Arabian Gulf.
Most countries now protect the dugong, and ever so slowly, its numbers are growing, bringing
this remarkable, harmless--and I would say adorable--marine mammal back from the brink
of extinction.
As our new friend settles back into a nap, pestered by his annoying poop-eating remora
freeloaders, I watch for a while, having finally gained his trust.
But then, with our scuba tanks getting low, it’s time for the long swim back to the
boat.
It took me 20 years to finally see a dugong in the wild.
But with continued protection, it is my fervent hope that dugongs will be much easier for
future generations to see, here in the wild Blue World.