Adopt a Dugong

Why adopt a dugong?

Dugongs are large marine mammals that live almost entirely on seagrass. When you adopt a dugong through the Marine Megafauna Foundation (MMF), you back the people working to protect the last viable dugong population in the western Indian Ocean, in Mozambique's Bazaruto Seascape.

Dugongs were once found along much of the east African coast, and they have disappeared from most of it. The East African subpopulation is now assessed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List, a reassessment led by our partners at Bazaruto Archipelago National Park with contributions from MMF.

The national park protects part of their range, but the seagrass meadows extend well beyond its boundary into the Inhassoro and Govuro districts, where there is no formal protection at all. MMF works on that unprotected coast, where the animals face three main pressures:

• Gill nets and drag nets, used widely along this coast. Nets left out overnight are the greatest risk to animals that feed on shallow seagrass flats after dark.
• Drowning in nets. Local communities report that air-breathing animals such as dugongs often become entangled and drown before the nets are retrieved.
• Lost seagrass. Coastal erosion, severe weather, and development are burying the seagrass beds dugongs depend on.

About dugongs

The dugong (Dugong dugon) is a large marine mammal often known as the "sea cow." It is entirely dependent on healthy seagrass ecosystems, so a dugong population can only be as secure as the meadows it grazes.

Dugongs are elusive. Fishers in the Bazaruto Seascape had long reported that dugongs there feed mainly at night, and MMF's drone surveys supported them: no dugongs were seen from the air during daytime flights. What the animals leave behind is easier to spot. At low tide near Inhassoro, their feeding trails cut through the exposed seagrass meadows.

In Mozambique, dugongs are now found in a very limited area. Bazaruto Archipelago National Park, created in 1971 as one of Mozambique's first Marine Protected Areas, covers 1,430 km² (550 square miles) and is mandated to protect them. The same seagrass beds are also nursery habitat for the fish that coastal communities depend on, so protecting dugong habitat helps people too.

How your dugong adoption helps

Your dugong adoption supports MMF's work as a whole, including our research and conservation work on dugongs in Mozambique and the Dugong & Seagrass Conservation project led by Olivia Patterson. Between 2022 and 2026, MMF worked with the communities on the coast north of the national park to map where the seagrass grows, which animals use it, and what it would take for the families who fish there to protect it. The project:

• Produced the first detailed seagrass maps for the region, covering 92 square kilometers (36 square miles) of unprotected coastline, from satellite imagery, drop-camera checks, and on-foot surveys.
• Brought Inhassoro into the global Seagrass-Watch monitoring network, with quarterly surveys on permanent transects in priority dugong feeding grounds.
• Documented 45 dugong sightings through community-led monitoring, confirming that dugongs still use these unprotected waters.
• Supported two communities in proposing their own locally managed marine areas in critical dugong habitat.
• Helped fishing families in Nhamanhate move from nets to a cooperative farm, reducing fishing effort in priority conservation areas by more than 3,000 fishing days.
• Reached 1,835 students in six schools with dugong and seagrass lessons, and held three annual Dugong and Seagrass Festivals.

Next, MMF aims to keep the quarterly seagrass surveys and community dugong monitoring running, see the two proposed marine areas through government, and extend protection beyond the park's current boundary. Read the full story in Saving the Western Indian Ocean's last viable population of dugongs.