Seagrass and Dugongs

Ok so earlier in the field trip posts I nerded out about the mangroves. Now I am going to do a similar job of it on seagrasses and dugongs.

Seagrasses are this amazing group of aquatic plants that occurs in small pockets of temperate and tropical shallow waters. They are for the the most part rhizomatous, but do produce flowering structures and can reproduce by that method occasionally. They have an exceptional cuticle that allows for gas exchange but also helps to exclude salt from the plant. They grow in these massive lawns that resemble an underwater prairie.

Some of the most incredible creatures rely on seagrasses including sea turtles, sea dragons, and dugongs.

Sea dragons are a special type of sea horse that has fleshy projections that resemble weeds to help them be camouflaged within their home. The documentary Life has some great footage of a pair of courting sea dragons. I've linked a clip from YouTube to the right to share with you.

Dugongs are the relatives of North America's  manatees (who also eat seagrass in places like off the coast of Florida). They are slow gentle swimmers and have a similar lifestyle to manatees. They even look a like. The quickest give away that you are looking at a dugong and not a manatee is that the dugong's tail has two flukes shaped a bit like a dolphins while a manatee's tail is an oblong round shape like that of a paddle.
Dugongs are megafauna and a combination of habitat loss and past hunting has put them in danger of extinction. There is little we can do as humans but to protect their habitat and avoid running over them with our boats.

Image Source: DERM QLD Gov.© Colin Limpus

There is an excellent documentary released this past spring by a group headed by a professor from JCU Jamie Seymour called simply The Great Barrier Reef. I was trying to find just a clip of their dugong footage but couldn't. However the whole Australian version of the documentary and live Q&A sessions with this professor are available on YouTube. Check it out!