Dugongs are back on Kenya’s south coast

Category: Cetacean research, Dolphins, Dugongs, Humpback whales | Date: Jan 18 2009 | By: gvikenya

Before we move completely in to a new and exciting of year of GVI and Kenya, some of our research and community development team have put together their highlights and memories of the end of last year to share. So, from the research boat, Bardan…

Not forgetting the beautiful humpback whales, including their calves, that we saw and blogged during our first couple of weeks on the marine research programme back in October, the rest was equally exciting. On many occasions we could count ourselves lucky enough to spend time in the wake of large groups of Indian Ocean bottlenose dolphins… the coolest part though? Thanks to a lot of office time and more photographs of fins than we care to dwell on, we could recognise many of the dolphins and know them by name! Mothers, juveniles, calves all leaped from the water demonstrating elegance and playfulness in equal measure.

Indo-pacific humpback dolphins also put in an appearance but remarkably… and for the first time ever… the cetaceans (our whales and dolphins) were upstaged by another marine mammal. And one that we never truly, honestly expected to see, however much we had hoped. On 4th November 2008, our dedicated observers on board Bardan, whilst tracking bottlenose dolphins in to Funzi bay, recorded the first confirmed sighting of a dugong on Kenya’s south coast in the three years we have been here, and to our knowledge, in over a decade; none were recorded south of Mombasa in a 1998 aerial survey, whilst Kenya’s entire population, concentrated around the Lamu archipelago, could be down to single figures by now.

Tags: cetaceans, Dolphins, Dugong, Humpback whales, Kenya, marine research

5 Responses to “Dugongs are back on Kenya’s south coast”

admin, on 18 Jan 2009

WOW this is absolutely amazing news!!! Congratulations - we’d love to see more photos!

nairobinationalpark, on 19 Jan 2009

This is fantastic news. Let us hope that there are more nguva out there than we realise & an interesting picture of this extraordinary sea mammal too!

Annie, on 19 Jan 2009

How exciting to see these beautiful creatures in their natural habitat!!!!!!!

Gwili, on 20 Jan 2009

Wow! That is such great news. Let us hope this beautiful creature gets the protection it needs to survive… I have never seen a Dugong but hear stories of the days they were all over the calm coastal waters. What can be done to protect them if their population is so low?

gvikenya, on 30 Jan 2009

Hi there, thank you for all your comments, impossible to convey just how exciting this was for all of us here… after nearly three years in to our research programme it was such an unexpected event and the significance of it took a while to dawn on us. With the fate of dugongs on the Kenyan coast, and the East African coast as a whole, hanging in the balance, it is extremely encouraging to have one return to our area. And hopefully a good indicator of the work that Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and other stakeholders have been doing to conserve the marine habitats around the Shimoni archipelago.

Of course, one individual does not represent a viable population and we can only hope that it represents an indication that a small population could re-establish itself with time. In terms of protection, the key now is awareness amongst fishermen and boat operators as dugongs have suffered immensely from accidental entnglement in nets and collisions with boat propellors. Our role is provide KWS with the research data and support them in engaging local communities and other stakeholders in responsible use of the marine environment.

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