Friday Night Soother: some good news in a bad week
by digby
Sea Cow Baby Boom Is Good News for Great Barrier Reef
It’s rare to hear good news about Australia’s ailing Great Barrier Reef, but some of its larger animals are surviving against the odds.
Populations of dugongs—a relative of the manatee—have surged throughout the southern region of the coral reef, according to newly released aerial surveys, taken in November.
What's more, the rotund marine mammals seem to be experiencing a baby boom. Of the 5,500 animals counted, 10 percent were calves, says the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority report.
The last survey, in 2011, had found no calves at all following a powerful cyclone that stripped away seagrass, the herbivores' favorite food. (See "3D-Printed Reefs Offer Hope in Coral Bleaching Crisis.")
Since then, seagrass meadows have recovered along the shorelines, and so have dugongs. Females require a lot of the nutritious plants to have their babies.
It's “excellent news for this species, which is listed as vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature,” report co-author Susan Sobtzick, a coastal and estuarine ecologist at James Cook University, says by email.
To be sure, storms and flooding, which are increasing due to global warming, have a devastating effect on these sea grasses and therefore, the animals. So it's still a big challenge. But for right now, let's just be happy that we have a year in which a nearly extinct species is coming back.
They are lovely:
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