Dugongs are shy mammals that browse the underwater grasslands of the shallow Gulf sandbanks and flee at the slightest sign of human interference. It is a horrible tragedy that so many of these increasingly rare animals should be killed by humans, and it is all the more horrible that this massacre is neither intended nor wanted, and is totally accidental.
The Environmental Agency of Abu Dhabi has just published a study of the 153 dugongs that have been killed in Abu Dhabi waters since 2000, and 72.5 per cent were killed by drowning in illegal drift nets, a percentage that has risen to 85 per cent in the last five years. One-kilometre-long nets are banned because of the mass destruction they cause but fishermen still use them for their very lucrative netting of king fish, regardless of their destruction of other marine life.
It is also very wrong that some of these deathtraps get lost and drift away while still destroying sea life without regard for the law or its consequences. The answer lies in more rigorous enforcement of the existing law, and some effort to push the fishermen to find alternative lucrative activities.
