Climate change is getting more and more severe every day, causing seagrass, the main food source for dugongs, to deteriorate. The Department of Marine and Coastal Resources is experimenting with natural food plots to supplement dugongs’ diet. But will dugongs actually eat it?
On Wednesday, November 6, 2024, the Upper Andaman Sea Marine and Coastal Resources Research Center experimented with laying down natural food plots, which was the second day of the experiment to provide supplementary food for dugongs in a situation where seagrass is degraded. The area where the natural food plots were placed was the seagrass area at Rawai Beach Pier, Phuket Province, which is a seagrass area close to where dugongs come to forage. Three types of vegetables were used: morning glory, Chinese kale, and kale, to test the types of vegetables that dugongs are interested in.
And in the same week, the Upper Andaman Sea Marine and Coastal Resources Research Center conducted a third experiment on setting up natural food plots, this time using a mixture of morning glory, Chinese kale, Chinese cabbage, kale, and seaweed.
Will dugongs actually eat it?
From the experiment of laying down natural food plots from November 2-8, 2024, the results showed that on the morning of November 8, 2024, dugongs were found eating all the vegetables in the natural food plots. The dugong that came to eat was the “Great Whiteback Dugong”. This dugong ate all the food from the plot, which consisted of seaweed, Chinese kale, Chinese cabbage, kale,and morning glory. Only water hyacinth was left that this dugong did not eat. It can be considered that this experiment of laying down natural food plots was a success. The dugong really did come to eat these supplementary foods.
From this experiment, it was found that the dugongs changed their food sources by eating seaweed instead of seagrass. However, the seaweed is only a supplement for the dugongs and cannot replace the main food of the seagrass. However, these supplements prevent the dugongs from being in a state of food shortage.
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