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Transcript
00:00So what, we're just going to jump in on these things?
00:05Yep, that's the way we do it.
00:07But do we have enough people?
00:09We've got a good crew, they know what they're doing.
00:12Everything's right.
00:14Should I have renewed my life insurance?
00:17No, all you have to do is follow up.
00:21You've got your fins, your goggles.
00:25We're on the hunt for a very big and mysterious creature,
00:32one I've never seen up close and personal before.
00:36Okay, when they surface,
00:38sometimes you'll see a brown back coming out of the water,
00:41sometimes you'll see their head,
00:43sometimes you'll only see their nothpils come out,
00:45so sometimes they can be quite secretive.
00:47Alright, well, what I'm imagining is a really fat Loch Ness monster.
00:53Oh yeah, I suppose you could spray that.
00:56But it's not Nessie we're hot on the tail of.
00:59It's a dugong.
01:01We have dugongs, 10 metres in front of us.
01:04Is there one?
01:06I've joined an extraordinary week-long operation
01:09to catch, study and release this unique marine mammal.
01:13Sea World 1, Sea World 1, this is Sea World 2.
01:16Got it.
01:18We have a gun.
01:19Catch requires a boatload of humans in rugby helmets.
01:22You're welcome, mate. Thank you.
01:24Three decades of experience.
01:28And a half-tonne dugong who doesn't want to go to the vet.
01:32Oh, look, it's huge.
01:34It's insane.
01:36I can see this shadow moving under the water's surface.
01:39Yeah.
01:40Hasn't even taken a breath yet.
01:42The team wait for him to take at least three breaths
01:45before they enter the water
01:47to make sure he's burnt off enough energy
01:49to be safely caught.
01:53Oh, wow.
01:55Look at that.
01:56Oh, my gosh.
01:58That is wild.
02:03Oh.
02:04With a third breath, it's go time.
02:07Oh, my gosh.
02:11You're on it! You're on it!
02:12As soon as I get my goggles on.
02:19As the dugong tries to dive
02:21and the jumpers try to stop him,
02:24we start gathering data.
02:26Five minutes ago, I'd never even seen a dugong.
02:34Now I'm the one holding the tape measure.
02:41275.
02:44Do one more.
02:48Turns out, I didn't need life insurance.
02:51It's huge.
02:53It's powerful but not manic.
02:57And it actually feels smooth with little outfits.
03:04And it's beautiful.
03:06And its breath smells like seaweed.
03:09The team's work is far from over.
03:12Oh, my God.
03:14If you thought the hard part was catching a half-ton dugong,
03:20wait until you see them hoist him onto a boat.
03:24As a nature journalist,
03:27I spend a lot of my time observing wildlife
03:30from behind my binoculars.
03:34But not this time.
03:36That's the heat.
03:37It's huge.
03:38In this series, I'm getting up close and personal.
03:42Brilliant. That's fantastic.
03:44No matter how deadly the animal.
03:46You've got the only chance to get it off.
03:49And it's not just for fun.
03:51Seeing animals like this is absolutely incredible.
03:55I'll be joining scientists on location
03:59as they try to gain a deeper understanding of animals.
04:02Three, two, one.
04:04We all think we know.
04:06So adorable.
04:08And this time, it's dugongs.
04:11They look like floating potatoes.
04:15And fishermen once mistook them for mermaids.
04:20But today, groundbreaking research is shedding new light
04:25on their secretive lives.
04:27And their precarious future.
04:31I'm Dr Anne Jones.
04:33And things are about to get wild.
04:46Every year, a team of researchers and volunteers
04:48from the University of Queensland and the SeaWorld Foundation
04:52Hello.
04:54Join forces to conduct a very special survey.
04:58All right.
04:59Glad I will cancel. You burn your biscuits on these seats.
05:02And it all starts in the sky.
05:09Let's do it.
05:11Marine researcher Dr Merrick Eakins has spent the last 15 years
05:16volunteering as part of the world's largest dugong health study.
05:24Oh, beautiful day for it.
05:28Oh, wow.
05:30Beautiful.
05:32But to study a dugong, first, you have to find it.
05:38We're flying off the coast of Queensland,
05:41around 30 kilometres east of Brisbane.
05:44Make a look out there.
05:45That is Quandamooka country.
05:47This is what you might know as Moreton Bay.
05:51Down there is a marine park
05:55that's about 3,400 kilometres square.
05:58But right underneath me are about 1,000 dugongs.
06:03Apparently a thousand of them live here,
06:06right next to the city.
06:09Dugongs are the most common marine mammal in Northern Australia
06:14and spend up to 20 hours a day grazing in shallow waters.
06:18So you'd think that'd be easy to spot.
06:23What sort of thing am I looking for?
06:24We're looking for the dugong shape,
06:27sort of that bullet shape with the big tail.
06:29And sometimes what you can also do is you'll find a feeding trail
06:33where they've stirred up the mud and the seagrass.
06:35And hopefully we'll find a big herd of them, that's better.
06:38But we might see some solitaries first.
06:40I feel like we're searching for a contact lens in a swim pool.
06:44Well, we know where the seagrass beds are previously, so we'll just go straight for those ones.
06:53And then we'll search around, usually near the edge of the sandbank.
06:58All right.
06:59Oh, look at that!
07:04Oh!
07:05We've got a herd here.
07:06Oh, that's fantastic.
07:07See that, Anne?
07:08Yeah.
07:091, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 individuals down there.
07:13Oh, that is wild!
07:15Mark this one, so we can come back.
07:18Oh, look, there's a car!
07:19Oh, my goodness!
07:21They're absolutely shaped like those fish-shaped biscuits.
07:26That's exactly what they look like from above.
07:29See, there's another...
07:31Oh, my goodness!
07:32There's like 5, 10, 10, 20, 25 maybe?
07:37About 40 in that, and there's another herd of about 20 next to it.
07:41Oh, you can see their pathways.
07:43They look like little snail trails.
07:45Yeah, that's it.
07:46So, what they do is they sort of dive down and go along the bottom.
07:50Do a sort of lawnmower-type run.
07:52See how rotund that one was.
07:54It just came up for a breath.
07:56Yeah, the big round one's probably a female, probably a pregnant female then.
07:59It is so amazing.
08:01Why are we spotting them from the air?
08:03What's going to happen from here?
08:05Oh, from here, well, we've marked the location,
08:07and so then we can get in the boat and go to the GPS point
08:09and then try and find the herd.
08:11So what, they'll stay there?
08:12They tend to stay roughly in the same spot for a couple of weeks.
08:17The population here may seem healthy, but dugongs are in global decline.
08:24To find out more about what's been done to help them,
08:27I'm meeting lead investigator on the project, Dr Janet Lanyon.
08:30So what number season is this for you then?
08:3416.
08:35It's been going for a while now.
08:37Janet has been studying dugongs for over 40 years,
08:39and for almost half that time,
08:42she's been pioneering a way of checking the health of their population here.
08:46Yeah, it's a pretty full-on program.
08:48It's an intensive week for the team, who are hoping to catch at least 20 dugongs,
08:57and take over 200 samples and measurements from each one.
09:01Hi everyone, this is Anne.
09:03Oh, this is nerve-wracking.
09:06There's so many people.
09:09Hello.
09:10Hi, I'm Anne.
09:11I'm Chloe.
09:12As they prepare the kit for the boats,
09:14three of the team, Lockie, Helen and Chloe,
09:17show me the methods behind this madness.
09:20Wow.
09:21Okay, this is looking medical.
09:23Yes, so this is our two blood boxes.
09:25So taking blood on deck of the dugong is one of the main sampling types that we do.
09:30So what we've got in these bags are just all the blood tubes.
09:32There's quite a lot of tubes that we use.
09:35So that's for one animal?
09:36For one animal per bag.
09:37That's a lot of blood.
09:38So then it's just sort of a grab-and-go for each animal
09:41when Janet's doing the sticking.
09:43And what sort of thing are you trying to find out with the blood?
09:45Oh, all sorts of things.
09:47So basic haematology,
09:49looking at red blood cell counts and white blood cells and that sort of thing.
09:53We can look at hormones.
09:54We also look at stress hormones too,
09:57so getting an insight into their stress physiology.
10:00Some of the samples also tell us about diseases and heavy metals and various contaminants.
10:05Is it possible to take the bloods when you're in the water?
10:09Oh, it's really difficult.
10:11We tried that in the early years
10:14and we were unsuccessful in getting decent volumes of blood that were uncontaminated by seawater
10:19because you have to hold the pectoral thing out of the water.
10:21So the bloods are critical and that's one of the main reasons that we take the animals out of water.
10:27See you out there.
10:28See you there.
10:30The team are always looking for ways to reduce the more invasive methods of sampling.
10:35Hello.
10:36These alternatives require a bit of Aussie ingenuity.
10:39Are you a Frisbee fan?
10:41The Frisbees, yes.
10:43The Frisbees are really important in this program because they're a urine and a faecal collector
10:49and so they get placed under the dugong while it's on board the boat.
10:52What sort of thing are you going to find out from the scat or the urine?
10:57Hormones. You can find out if a dugong is pregnant and we've got this Frisbee covered in alfoil
11:03to make sure that there's no plastic contamination.
11:06And that's mainly because we can look for microplastics in the faeces.
11:11It's incredible, isn't it? Like dugongs, they're so incredibly secretive
11:14and so many of their secrets are in their poos.
11:16Yes, that's right.
11:19Before we head out on the boat, long-time volunteer Lockie has another job in mind for me.
11:25We've got a few different types of swabs here.
11:27They've got a really thick kind of tear layer, a mucusy tear layer.
11:31So we're going to try and get a little sample of that.
11:34We're going to look at getting some samples in the mouth and the tongue as well.
11:37Okay. But Janet, why are you doing this when you've got the bloods?
11:40What is this going to tell you that's different?
11:42We're always interested in finding alternatives to blood sampling.
11:45So if we can sample saliva or the tears of the animals
11:50and we can still pick up hormones or other markers of health, that's preferable.
11:55Okay. All right. Well, can I carry something to take out to the boat?
11:58That'd be fantastic, yeah. If you want to carry this one out, maybe.
12:02I'll see you soon, Janet.
12:04I feel like I got the easy job.
12:06I'll see you soon.
12:10With the volunteers in town for just a week and a shopping list of 20 dugongs,
12:16we're back out on the boat with a floating dugong clinic on our heels.
12:20And it's not long before we find our next customer.
12:33The jump team manoeuvre the dugong onto a stretcher slung between two boats.
12:39Which they will use to transport the dugong towards the larger boat for his check-up.
12:44The dugong is settled, having left a trail of exhausted humans in its wake.
13:01This is my...
13:04How'd you go?
13:06Good.
13:07I... I...
13:09That's amazing. You did well.
13:11It's so strong.
13:13That's a big male, actually.
13:17Everybody on board?
13:19Um, nearly. Hey.
13:21So, that's what we do, over and over.
13:24Merrick travels in the stretcher to keep a close eye on our new friend.
13:38I think, collectively, we're...
13:42Oh, yeah.
13:44We're both really hard and really high adrenaline at the same time.
13:48Not getting past me.
13:49Not getting past me.
13:50No, no, I mean...
13:52Yes.
13:54On board the floating clinic, SeaWorld One, the team are standing by.
13:59As they prepare to lift this giant sea creature onto their back deck.
14:05It's a big tail for you.
14:06Can you come?
14:09Can you come?
14:14Oh, I never get sick of that smell.
14:17There it is.
14:20An adult dugong weighs around 500 kilograms and measures about three metres in length.
14:26Rocky, will you tie off for me, please?
14:28So, it takes a big winch and a big team to hoick this fella onto the boat.
14:36It's huge.
14:39It is so big.
14:40And it looks incredibly vulnerable when its soft nostrils come up and take a breath.
14:47It just...
14:48Yeah.
14:49It's amazing.
14:51You know when you get a delicious toddler and they've got, like, little rolls?
14:55That's how tubby it is.
14:58It's just gorgeous.
15:00This is the first time the dugong has been out of the water.
15:04Ever.
15:06So, to encourage him to keep breathing, Janet pours water over his nostrils, which mimics the sensation of surfacing for breath.
15:12Have we had a breath?
15:14Yeah.
15:16Once Janet is happy, the team aim to complete the health assessment in 30 minutes.
15:22It's a well-oiled machine.
15:24Keeping the dugong safe is paramount.
15:35As he is measured and photographed from nostril to tail fluke.
15:47Janet takes the blood samples from vessels deep under the dugong's pectoral fin.
15:52You ready for us to come in for swabs?
16:02Yep.
16:04And I gear up to help Lockie take the swabs.
16:07Just got a little checklist here.
16:09Everything we need to do the swabs on the animal.
16:11Yeah.
16:13So up the front end.
16:14And so...
16:15So it's all pre-labelled, we're ready.
16:16Exactly right, yep.
16:17Tongue one, two, three...
16:18Yep.
16:19...and four.
16:20Perfect, yep.
16:21Under strict supervision, I start collecting dugong tears.
16:25Great.
16:27See that little tear layer?
16:28I can.
16:29So if you just pull it off right, yep, that's perfect.
16:31Yeah, it comes out like a bit of snot out of your nose.
16:33Exactly right.
16:35Yeah, that's great.
16:36So what you can do, just cap that one.
16:37Cap that one.
16:38And that's how we get the tears.
16:39Thank you for letting me look at your eyes, darling.
16:40We've got two minutes.
16:41Yeah.
16:42Lockie also collects samples from the nostrils and saliva from inside the mouth.
16:54So it can be a little tricky to go up and access in the mouth and on the tongue.
16:57These samples will help piece together a picture of this dugong's health, along with what and
17:03where he's been grazing.
17:05You know, that's how we learn about this population here in Northern Bay.
17:08It also helps us get a baseline for these guys as well.
17:10So what a healthy dugong looks like compared to what maybe a compromised dugong looks like.
17:15So it's all really good data to compare to all the other herd members as well.
17:19And with the advancing technology, you know, one day down the track,
17:22we might be able to use these same samples a different way.
17:25It's like a body.
17:27It excretes information.
17:28It's all biological information, right?
17:30How long have we been out of water?
17:33How long has it been? How long?
17:35So we've just about found, aren't we?
17:39Yep.
17:44With the sampling complete, all hands are on deck to return this dugong safely back to his herd.
18:09The samples that Janet's team collects are revealing that the dugongs rarely stray from home waters,
18:24and have a very specific diet.
18:28So can the answer to their conservation be found on their dinner plate?
18:45The next morning, heavy rain and high winds makes it unsafe to catch dugongs.
18:52So, with the boats stuck in the harbour, I take advantage of the low tide to roam around their canteen.
19:00Is that a cone snail?
19:07Are you a cone snail?
19:10No, you're not.
19:12You're a hermit crab.
19:15Oh, what a cutie.
19:18I've been told that out here on the mudflats are a whole heap of seagrasses, and that's what the dugongs eat.
19:31It's really short.
19:46Really short, like someone's been over it with a mower.
19:50There's a fair amount of what I think is seagrass here, but it's all a bit underwhelming.
20:01For some reason, I thought that it would have to be really big plants because it's a really big animal.
20:09These plants are tiny, like tiny, tiny, less than a centimetre tall, some of them.
20:16Now, how much of this seagrass would a dugong have to eat?
20:23Like, they weigh up to 500 kilograms, right?
20:26They'd have to eat so much of this grass.
20:32It doesn't seem very effective.
20:35All this talk of eating has made me hungry.
20:38This talk of eating has made me hungry.
20:41I'm off to find cake.
20:44And I'm off to find cake.
20:47And answers.
20:51I'm sort of glad we're not out on the boat today.
20:54That would be a bit miserable.
20:56Oh, I know.
20:59Thank you. Great, thank you very much.
21:01Thank you, thank you.
21:03I went out for a walk on the mudflats,
21:05and in my head I had thought that seagrass meadows would be like waving,
21:10like almost like tiny, you know, forests.
21:12It doesn't seem logical to me that an animal that big could rely on plants this big.
21:18I know. Yeah.
21:19So, although it looks like there's not much seagrass there,
21:22most of the seagrass plant is underneath the sediment.
21:25So there are underground stems or rhizomes and also roots.
21:29And that stuff is really good food for dugongs.
21:32So it's full of sugars and starch and all sorts of goodies.
21:37So the leaves are really important for the dugongs because they're high in protein,
21:40but you've got all the goodness in the rest of the plant too.
21:43So do they sort of like hoover that up like a linguine?
21:46Like how do they actually get that into their mouth?
21:48Okay, so they feed in different ways depending on what they're feeding on.
21:51So for seagrasses that have upright shoots,
21:54they'll actually grasp those and pull them.
21:57And pull it out.
21:58Yep. And then the other seagrasses, they excavate.
22:01So for the really small stuff, they'll actually dig it up.
22:04These hoover-bulldozer hybrids have poor eyesight
22:08and among the smallest teeth of any mammal relative to their size.
22:12But they have such sensitive muzzle bristles
22:15that they can detect even the tiniest scrap of seagrass.
22:20So how much of that grass do they take in per day?
22:23Oh, huge amount.
22:25If they feed on that little round halophila species that they really like,
22:28they may need about 65 kilos fresh weight per day
22:33in order to survive.
22:34And then if they breed, they need even more.
22:37So when a dugong comes along and eats 65 kilograms of grass in one day,
22:43how does the grass respond?
22:45Yeah, well, remember that they're not taking 100% of the seagrass
22:49in the feeding trails, so there are remnants left.
22:52And those rhizomes are able to send up new shoots.
22:55And so the way the seagrass responds is fairly rapid.
22:59But also, because they grow fast, they don't lay down that high level of fibre.
23:05And so it ends up being perfect food for dugongs.
23:07So they just keep regenerating it.
23:09So could you call them then an ecosystem engineer?
23:11Yeah, absolutely.
23:13This ecosystem is not just critical for dugongs.
23:16The seagrass is a valuable carbon store.
23:19And the beds act like an anchor, stabilising sediment along the coast
23:24and dampening wave action.
23:26But the seagrass is fragile.
23:29Here in northern Australia, some of the biggest threats to seagrasses
23:33at the moment are these extreme climate events that we're having.
23:36We know that with every flood effect or cyclone,
23:39there's direct damage to seagrass beds.
23:41Do you see that reflected in the dugongs?
23:44We do.
23:45And in fact, every time there's been a major rainfall event
23:48that's led to coastal flooding, they're having fewer carbs.
23:51And after some of the really major cyclones and floods,
23:54there have been zero carbs in the population.
23:57So their growth rates, their reproductive rates,
23:59how healthy they are, everything, their whole life history
24:02is determined by their food.
24:04Janet's work has revealed a really important secret,
24:09that yes, there are dugongs out there in the bay that are healthy,
24:13but that it might not always be like that.
24:16Because at this stage, we don't actually know
24:19how many extreme weather events the seagrass meadows
24:22are going to be able to absorb.
24:24And along with that, it means that the dugong's future
24:27remains uncertain.
24:29It's my final day in Moreton Bay,
24:36and I'm heading out on one last trip with the team.
24:42Hey, can you guys get a big female this time, please?
24:47Dugongs can live for up to 70 years and are slow breeders,
24:51so with the population in decline,
24:53scientists need to know more about how they reproduce.
24:57You got one?
25:00Oh, wow.
25:02That can only happen if they find a female.
25:19Janet has assessed over 250 dugongs out of the water.
25:24You happy to go on three?
25:26OK, three, two.
25:28And while launching yourself at a dugong
25:30seems completely bonkers,
25:33it's been shown to have minimal impact
25:35on their stress physiology.
25:40Got the pace?
25:41Yep.
25:43Not the case for the jump team,
25:46who are put through the wringer by this powerful female.
25:49The team measure her substantial girth
25:55before sliding her onto the taxi stretcher.
26:01My main priority remains not drowning.
26:05I think this is what kids are talking about when they say they want to be a marine scientist.
26:22I'm pretty sure that this is exactly what they're talking about.
26:26This is the good part of it.
26:28But most of the time you just hold them there.
26:35OK, this is a big female.
26:37Preparations are made as the team get this female over onto the boat.
26:41And everyone gets to work as the 30-minute countdown begins.
26:49Right, right.
26:5068.
26:5168.
26:52Taking measurements.
26:53Yep, yep, staying on 68.
26:55Taking bloods.
26:57And placing an identification tag on her tail fluke.
27:00Can we have some hands too?
27:04We're just going to roll slightly towards Mary.
27:07Ready when you are.
27:09One of the most useful tools on the boat is an ultrasound machine.
27:14Vet, Claire Madden, uses it to take measurements such as blubber thickness.
27:20But it's also used to check whether a female dugong has a calf on board.
27:25And Claire confirms that this one is pregnant.
27:29So with the ultrasound we were able to see the fetus.
27:33Oh my goodness.
27:34Yeah.
27:35That is amazing.
27:36So when we measured her in water she had all the dimensions of a pregnant animal.
27:40So that gives us a clue.
27:41And then we come up through the ultrasound.
27:43And then the other thing we do is from the poo sample we then measure progesterone and that will confirm the pregnancy test.
27:49The pregnancy test.
27:50Yeah, but we've seen the fetus so we know.
27:52Ahhhh.
27:54That is so exciting.
27:55A baby dugong.
27:59Dugongs breed once every three to five years and carry a single calf which they may nurse until they have another.
28:11It's a huge energetic investment.
28:14And for a home body that relies on a vanishingly specific diet, protecting the seagrass may be the key to protecting the dugong.
28:25This population of dugongs is incredibly special, not least of all because it is the most studied population in all of the world.
28:36More than that, the studies that are going on here right now, the techniques that they're developing are going to be key to the conservation of the dugong worldwide.
28:46They're going to be able to apply this Australian research to wherever the dugongs live.
28:51And hopefully that means that we're going to have many, many more decades to find out the secret lives of dugongs.
28:59Next time, it's the Sunda Pangolin.
29:04Look at that.
29:06Oh, no, no, no.
29:07Your trap just got tricked.
29:08Thank you so much.
29:09Thank you so much.
29:10Thank you very much.
29:11Thank you so much.