Dugong Rehabilitation
Overview
In November 2002, eight months after being released into Moreton Bay, Pig was found in Days Gutter, adjacent to the Kooringal township at the southern end of Moreton Island. He was in a seriously malnourished state, and also had multiple injuries consistent with tusk wounds inflicted by another male dugong.
He was taken back to Sea World for treatment, but grave fears were held for his survival as his eating patterns and weight fluctuated, showing no steady pattern of improvement. Although he eventually gained about 20kg more than his weight at recapture, he still remained more than 30kg lighter than when he was released in March 2002.
Over a three-year period, numerous tests were done to try to pinpoint the reason(s) that he failed to regain the good health he had shown prior to release, but there was no clear indication of why he now failed to thrive.
For 18 months prior to release he had flourished when housed outdoors, where water temperatures reached a minimum of 17°C during Winter. Now, in his emaciated (and therefore poorly-insulated) post-recapture state, it seemed that he could be compromised by water temperatures somewhere around the mid-20°C's or perhaps even higher.
For this reason, he has had to be maintained in a specially heated rehabilitation pool adjacent to the Veterinary Quarantine Centre (VQC) since his return to Sea World.
Many months into his recuperation, consensus grew amongst various stakeholders that it would be unjustifiable to contemplate any future attempt to re-release Pig.
Eventually, in August 2004, Sea World made a formal application to the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency (QEPA) to transfer Pig off the Rescue Permit under which he was hand-raised and released, and on to Sea World's Wildlife Exhibitor's License. Permission to do so was granted in October 2004.
Plans were made to house Pig where he could be seen by the public - in a dedicated area with a heated pool which allowed underwater viewing. Demolition & refurbishment of the interior of the building that had once been the World of the Sea Theatre began.
Photographs, video footage, object galleries, and several interactive stations were utilised, in addition to standard textual graphics with a strong emphasis on dugongs and dugong conservation in general- as well as lots of specific information about Pig and his story- to increase the educational impact of this interpretive material.
The new exhibit Dugong Discovery opened on Boxing Day 2004.
In addition to Pig's unique contribution to raising public awareness of dugongs and threats to their survival, the hand-raising techniques developed during his original rehabilitation have already proved useful, after the January 2005 stranding of yet another baby dugong in central Queensland.
This female calf is currently making steady progress at Sea World after being rescued from a beach at Emu Park (between Rockhampton and Yeppoon) by Rosslyn Bay Marine Parks rangers and an elder of the local Darumbal community. She has been named 'Wuru'- a Darumbal word meaning 'young child'.
As Wuru continued to thrive, in July 2005 we sought QEPA permission to move her into Dugong Discovery where she could be seen by the public in lieu of Pig.
Wuru is currently housed in the 3.9m deep Dugong Discovery tank, an environment she shares with various species of fish, small benthic sharks (grey carpet sharks, epaulette sharks) and stingrays.
She still gains most of her nourishment from bottle-feeds of milk, but will be weaned gradually over the next six months or so.
Pig was taken off display and back to his rehabilitation pool adjacent to the VQC, where it was more practicable to more closely monitor changes in his body weight, blood values, food intake and faecal output.
Subsequently, staff came back to revisit the idea that the bacterial flora in Pig's intestine, essential to allow him to digest a herbivorous diet, was somehow not up to scratch.
Within the first couple of months of his recapture, re-inoculation of his gut with faeces from wild dugongs was attempted on two occasions, but in retrospect it was felt that for various reasons this process might not have been successful.
In September and October 2005, more freshly-passed faeces was collected in the vicinity of feeding dugong herds in Moreton Bay, and efficiently delivered to Pig.
As he was going through yet another downturn in his appetite and body weight, a number of medications were also administered around the same time.
Since then, Pig has rallied and begun to eat very well, regaining a great deal of lost condition and, for the first time since his recapture, is steadily closing in on his release weight.
