Fisherman fights to protect rare mammal
Minh Thu, Vietnam News 12 Apr 10;
Nguyen Van Khanh carries a fishnet to his ship in preparation for an off-shore fishing expedition. Based on his extensive experience, he can smile at the thought of how much his catch will bring in when his wife takes it to the market tomorrow morning.
Before working as an ordinary fisherman, Khanh, now 46, was known as the "sea monster" on Phu Quoc Island because he and his father, who died several years ago, had caught and slaughtered hundreds of dugongs, a large marine mammal currently at risk of extinction according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
The dugong has been hunted for thousands of years for its meat and oil. The dugong's habitat has been reduced and disjointed, and its population is close to extinction. In Viet Nam, the mammals only live in the sea off Kien Giang Province's Phu Quoc Island and Ba Ria – Vung Tau Province's Con Dao Island.
Khanh began joining his father on long-day trips out to sea when he was only eight years old. When he grew up, he became the captain of a ship of dugong hunters.
Aware of his past mistakes, Khanh gave up his hunt for dugongs in recent years. He has also travelled to other areas in the region to persuade fishermen to stop catching dugongs.
Since the dugong's primary food choice is seagrass, which grows abundantly in the water off Phu Quoc, they tend to crowd the region. At first fishermen caught the gentle creatures on accident because they swim slowly and got trapped in fishing nets. But people quickly discovered that they could earn a lot of money selling dugong. Besides its meat, which sells for about the same price as beef, the animal's skin and bones can be used to make medicine.
Female dugong's are pregnant for 13 months and only give birth to one baby with each pregnancy. As a result, mother's have a strong attachment to their young, said an official from WWF.
After decades of wandering the sea, Khanh agrees that dugong's have deep affection for their young.
A female dugong often looks for food with her child. If one of them is caught in a net, the free one never goes away but stays within a short distance from the one that was caught.
"So I knew that when I caught a dugong, I could patiently wait for the other one to surface, or even return a few days later to find it. I never went home empty handed," Khanh says.
Khanh once caught a 20kg baby dugong. It cried and struggled in the net while tears fell from the mother's eyes. A few days later he returned to the same spot and caught the mother, as expected, because she was still searching for her baby.
"When I saw the mother dugong lying on the ship, her body looked like a woman with breasts full of milk, I was hurt and haunted," Khanh says. "I decided to give up."
Hang a net
Like all species of sirenians that still swim earth's seas, the dugong has a fusiform body, wide in the middle and tapered at the ends, with no dorsal fin or hind limbs. Instead, it has paddle-like forelimbs to manoeuvre itself. It is easily distinguished from the other sirenians, such as manatees, by its fluked, dolphin-like tail.
The dugong's main diet is seagrasses, meaning they are restricted to coastal habitats. The largest dugong concentrations typically occur in wide, shallow, protected areas such as bays, mangrove channels and the lee sides of large inshore islands. Their snouts are downturned sharply, an evolutionary adaptation that allows for grazing and uprooting seagrasses.
These days, Khanh focuses his sights on catching small fish only. The huge nets he once used to catch dugongs have been put away forever. In sad memory of his past, Khanh still has a pair of tusks from an 800kg dugong, the largest one he ever trapped.
"I could sell them for VND25 million (US$1,300) but I have refused all offers. I keep them because they remind me of my misguided past," Khanh says.
When Khanh learns that someone has caught a dugong, he immediately tries to persuade them to release the creature back to sea. "Sometimes the people agree but sometimes they scold me and drive me away," he says.
Khanh and several other fishermen have joined a group of volunteers founded by the local authorities to propagandise information and urge fishermen to stop catching dugongs and other rare animals.
"We meet every week to talk about our plans and distribute leaflets to help people understand why the animal should be protected," Khanh says.
However, fishermen from neighbouring provinces still come to catch dugongs and our volunteers are unable to stop them.
He suggests that the authorities should set up board and anchor a buoy to mark the restricted area.
Thanks to a project preserving seagrass launched in 2002, the sea environment has been protected. Many rare and valuable sea life have returned to the area, including dugong, says Le Van Tinh, a specialist from the Phu Quoc Nature Reserve.
The WWF continues to support staff at the local nature reserve in its administration of surveys and experiments to grow and protect seagrass, said Tham Ngoc Diep, from WWF Viet Nam.
"We don't have a particular project to protect dugong. We protect all creatures, environments and scenery in the area," she says.
The environmental specialists use reports from the locals to estimate the number of dugongs and make records of the areas where they live and look for food. However, there are no scientifically accurate statistics, so dugong protection is difficult.
Regretfully, many fishermen are not aware of how important it is to protect these wonderful creatures. Tinh also confesses that there are no permanent sea patrols because there are insufficient funds and human resources for the task.
The Khanh Hoa Province-based Nha Trang Institute of Oceanography has conducted seagrass surveys in the Con Dao region since 1995. Staff from the WWF Viet Nam, Nha Trang Institute of Oceanography and Con Dao National Park also recorded information about dugong sightings and feeding areas during their surveys around the Con Dao islands.
Fishermen like Khanh who survive thanks to the treasures they get from the sea should behave well and protect the sea at any price, he says.
After a day of fishing, Khanh returns home as the sun begins to set on the horizon, his boat full of the bounty of the sea. Only small fish have made the cut, but the man is satisfied.
"I'm experienced enough that I should be able to catch enough fish to survive. I don't need to be greedy," he says. — VNS
