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We’re not just here to bring you the best web dramas — we’re also part of a powerful wellness network for men that cares about your performance both on screen… and in the bedroom.
😓 Feeling low energy, struggling with drive, or finishing too fast? You're not alone — but you don't have to settle for less.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00So what, we're just going to jump in on these things?
00:05Yep, that's the way we do it.
00:07But do we have enough people?
00:09We've got a good crew, they know what they're doing.
00:12Everything's right.
00:14Should I have renewed my life insurance?
00:17No, all you have to do is follow up.
00:22You've got your fins, your goggles.
00:25We're on the hunt for a very big and mysterious creature,
00:32one I've never seen up close and personal before.
00:36Okay, when they surface,
00:38sometimes you'll see a brown back coming out of the water,
00:41sometimes you'll see their head,
00:43sometimes you'll only see their nothpils come out,
00:45so sometimes they can be quite secretive.
00:47Alright, well, what I'm imagining is a really fat Loch Ness monster.
00:53Oh, yeah, I suppose you could pray that.
00:56But it's not Nessie we're hot on the tail of.
00:59It's a dugong.
01:01We have dugongs 10 metres in front of us.
01:04Is there one?
01:06I've joined an extraordinary week-long operation
01:09to catch, study and release this unique marine mammal.
01:13Sea World 1, Sea World 1, this is Sea World 2.
01:16Let's get it.
01:18We have a go.
01:19Catch requires a boatload of humans in rugby helmets.
01:22Okay, mate. Thank you.
01:24Three decades of experience.
01:28And a half-tonne dugong who doesn't want to go to the vet.
01:32Oh, look, it's huge.
01:35It's insane.
01:36I can see this shadow moving under the water's surface.
01:39Yeah.
01:40Hasn't even taken a breath yet.
01:42The team wait for him to take at least three breaths
01:45before they enter the water
01:47to make sure he's burnt off enough energy
01:49to be safely caught.
01:53Oh, wow.
01:55Look at that.
01:56Oh, my gosh.
01:58That is wild.
02:03Oh.
02:04With a third breath, it's go time.
02:07Oh, my gosh.
02:11You're on it! You're on it!
02:12As soon as I get my goggles on.
02:19As the dugong tries to dive
02:21and the jumpers try to stop him,
02:23we start gathering data.
02:25Five minutes ago, I'd never even seen a dugong.
02:34Now I'm the one holding the tape measure.
02:41275.
02:44Do one more.
02:48Turns out I didn't need life insurance.
02:52It's huge.
02:53It's powerful but not manic.
02:57And it actually feels smooth with little outfits.
03:04And it's beautiful.
03:06And its breath smells like seaweed.
03:09The team's work is far from over.
03:12Oh, my God.
03:14If you thought the hard part was catching a half-ton dugong,
03:16wait until you see them hoist him onto a boat.
03:25As a nature journalist,
03:27I spend a lot of my time observing wildlife
03:30from behind my binoculars.
03:33But not this time.
03:36That's the heat.
03:37It's huge.
03:38In this series, I'm getting up close and personal.
03:42Brilliant. That's fantastic.
03:44No matter how deadly the animal.
03:47I got it.
03:49And it's not just for fun.
03:51Seeing animals like this is absolutely incredible.
03:54I'll be joining scientists on location as they try to gain a deeper understanding of animals.
04:02Three, two, one.
04:04We all think we know.
04:06So adorable.
04:08And this time, it's dugongs.
04:12They look like floating potatoes.
04:16And fishermen once mistook them for mermaids.
04:21But today, groundbreaking research is shedding new light on their secretive lives.
04:28And their precarious future.
04:32I'm Dr. Anne Jones, and things are about to get wild.
04:37Every year, a team of researchers and volunteers from the University of Queensland and the SeaWorld Foundation
04:53Hello.
04:54Join forces to conduct a very special survey.
04:58All right.
04:59Glad I wore pants so you'd burn your biscuits on these seats.
05:02And it all starts in the sky.
05:08Go find some dugongs?
05:09Let's do it, yeah.
05:11Marine researcher Dr. Merrick Eakins has spent the last 15 years volunteering as part of the world's largest dugong health study.
05:24Oh, beautiful day for it.
05:26But to study a dugong, first, you have to find it.
05:38We're flying off the coast of Queensland, around 30 kilometres east of Brisbane.
05:43Make a look out there, that is Quandamooka country.
05:47This is what you might know as Moreton Bay.
05:51Down there is a marine park that's about 3,400 kilometres square.
05:59But right underneath me are about 1,000 dugongs.
06:03Apparently, 1,000 of them live here, right next to the city.
06:08Dugongs are the most common marine mammal in Northern Australia.
06:14And spend up to 20 hours a day grazing in shallow waters.
06:18So, you'd think that'd be easy to spot.
06:22What sort of thing am I looking for?
06:25Well, we're looking for the dugong shape, sort of that bullet shape with the big tail.
06:28And sometimes what you can also do is you'll find a feeding trail where they've stirred up the mud and the seagrass.
06:35And hopefully we'll find a big herd of them, that's better.
06:38But we might see some solitaries first.
06:41I feel like we're searching for a contact lens in a swim pool.
06:46Well, we know where the seagrass beds are.
06:49Previously, so we'll just go straight for those ones.
06:52And then we'll search around, usually near the edge of the sandbank.
06:58Oh, right.
07:03Oh, look at that.
07:04Oh, look at that.
07:05We've got a herd here.
07:06Oh, that's fantastic.
07:07See that, Anne?
07:08Yeah.
07:091, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 individuals down there.
07:13That is wild.
07:15Mark this one.
07:16So we can come back.
07:17Oh, look, there's a car.
07:18Oh my goodness.
07:21They're absolutely shaped like those fish shaped biscuits.
07:26That's exactly what they look like from above.
07:29See, there's another.
07:31Oh my goodness.
07:32There's like 5, 10, 10, 20, 25 maybe.
07:37About 40 in that.
07:38And there's another herd of about 20 next to it.
07:41Oh, you can see their pathways.
07:43They look like little snail trails.
07:45Yeah, that's it.
07:46So what they do is they sort of dive down and go along the bottom.
07:49Do a sort of lawn mower type front.
07:52See how rotund that one was.
07:54It just came up for a breath.
07:55Yeah, the big round one's probably a female.
07:57Probably a pregnant female then.
07:59It is so amazing.
08:01Why are we spotting them from the air?
08:03What's going to happen from here?
08:04Oh, from here, we mark the location.
08:07And so then we can get in the boat and go to the GPS point
08:09and then try and find the herd.
08:11So what, they'll stay there?
08:12They tend to stay roughly in the same spot for a couple of weeks.
08:16The population here may seem healthy, but dugongs are in global decline.
08:24To find out more about what's been done to help them, I'm meeting lead investigator on the project, Dr. Janet Lanyon.
08:30So what number season is this for you then?
08:33My number.
08:3416.
08:35It's been going for a while now.
08:37Janet has been studying dugongs for over 40 years.
08:40And for almost half that time, she's been pioneering a way of checking the health of their population here.
08:46Yeah, it's a pretty full-on program.
08:49It's an intensive week for the team, who are hoping to catch at least 20 dugongs and take over 200 samples and measurements from each one.
09:01Hi everyone.
09:02This is Anne.
09:03Oh, this is nerve-wracking.
09:05There's so many people.
09:08Hello.
09:09Hi, I'm Anne.
09:11As they prepare the kit for the boats, three of the team, Lockie, Helen and Chloe, show me the methods behind this madness.
09:19Wow.
09:20Okay, this is looking medical.
09:22Yes, yep.
09:23So this is our two blood boxes.
09:25So taking blood on deck of the dugong is one of the main sampling types that we do.
09:29So what we've got in these bags are just all the blood tubes.
09:32There's quite a lot of tubes that we use.
09:35So that's for one animal?
09:36For one animal per bag.
09:37That's a lot of blood.
09:38So then it's just sort of a grab and go for each animal when Janet's doing the sticking.
09:43And what sort of thing are you trying to find out with the blood?
09:45Oh, all sorts of things.
09:47So basic haematology, looking at red blood cell counts and white blood cells and that sort
09:52of thing.
09:53We can look at hormones.
09:54We also look at stress hormones too, so getting an insight into their stress physiology.
09:59Some of the samples also tell us about diseases and heavy metals and various contaminants.
10:05Is it possible to take the bloods when you're in the water?
10:09Oh, it's really difficult.
10:11We tried that in the early years and we were unsuccessful in getting decent volumes of blood
10:17that were uncontaminated by seawater because you have to hold the pectoral thing out of
10:21the water.
10:22So the bloods are critical and that's one of the main reasons that we take the animals
10:26out of water.
10:27See you out there.
10:28See you there.
10:29The team are always looking for ways to reduce the more invasive methods of sampling.
10:34Hello.
10:35Although some of the alternatives require a bit of Aussie ingenuity.
10:38Are you a Frisbee fan?
10:40The Frisbees, yes.
10:42The Frisbees are really important in this program because they're a urine and a faecal collector
10:48and so they get placed under the dugong while it's on board the boat.
10:52What sort of thing are you going to find out from the scat or the urine?
10:57Hormones.
10:58You can find out if a dugong is pregnant and we've got this Frisbee covered in alfoil to
11:03make sure that there's no plastic contamination.
11:06And that's mainly because we can look for microplastics in the faeces.
11:10It's incredible, isn't it?
11:11Like dugongs, they're so incredibly secretive and so many of their secrets are in their poos.
11:16That's right.
11:17That's right.
11:18Before we head out on the boat, long-time volunteer Lockie has another job in mind for me.
11:24We've got a few different types of swabs here.
11:27They've got a really thick kind of tear layer, a mucusy tear layer.
11:31So we're going to try and get a little sample of that.
11:33We're going to look at getting some samples in the mouth and the tongue as well.
11:36Okay.
11:37But Janet, why are you doing this when you've got the bloods?
11:40What is this going to tell you that's different?
11:42We're always interested in finding alternatives to blood sampling.
11:45So if we can sample saliva or the tears of the animals and we can still pick up hormones
11:51or other markers of health, that's preferable.
11:54Okay.
11:55All right.
11:56Well, can I carry something to take out to the boat?
11:58That'd be fantastic, yeah.
11:59If you want to carry this one out, maybe.
12:01I'll see you soon, Janet.
12:02Okay.
12:03All right.
12:04I feel like I got the easy job.
12:05With the volunteers in town for just a week and a shopping list of 20 dugongs, we're back
12:17out on the boat with a floating dugong clinic on our heels.
12:22And it's not long before we find our next customer.
12:33The jump team maneuver the dugong onto a stretcher slung between two boats, which they will use
12:41to transport the dugong towards the larger boat for his checkup.
12:56The dugong is settled, having left a trail of exhausted humans in its wake.
13:02This is wild.
13:03How'd you go?
13:04Good.
13:05How's it going?
13:06Good.
13:07How's it going?
13:08Yeah.
13:09That's amazing.
13:10You did well.
13:11It's so strong.
13:12Yeah, that's a big male, actually.
13:17Anybody on board?
13:19Nearly.
13:20Okay.
13:21So, that's what we do, over and over.
13:24Merrick travels in the stretcher to keep a close eye on our new friend.
13:37On board the floating clinic, SeaWorld One, the team are standing by, as they prepare to
14:00lift this giant sea creature onto their back deck.
14:04There it is.
14:19An adult dugong weighs around 500 kilograms and measures about three metres in length.
14:26So, it takes a big winch and a big team to hoik this fella onto the boat.
14:33It's huge.
14:34It is so big.
14:37And it looks incredibly vulnerable when its soft nostrils come up and take a breath.
14:46It just, yeah, it's amazing.
14:50You know when you get a delicious toddler and they've got, like, little rolls?
14:55That's how tubby it is.
14:56That's how tubby it is.
14:57It's just gorgeous.
15:00This is the first time the dugong has been out of the water, ever.
15:05So, to encourage him to keep breathing, Janet pours water over his nostrils, which mimics
15:10the sensation of surfacing for breath.
15:12Have we had a breath?
15:13Yeah.
15:14Once Janet is happy, the team aim to complete the health assessment in 30 minutes.
15:23It's a well-oiled machine.
15:29Keeping the dugong safe is paramount, as he is measured and photographed from nostril
15:39to tail fluke.
15:47Janet takes the blood samples from vessels deep under the dugong's pectoral fin.
16:06Are you ready for us to come in for swabs?
16:08Yep.
16:09And I gear up to help Lockie take the swabs.
16:13Just got a little checklist here.
16:15Everything we need to do is the swabs on the animal.
16:17Yeah.
16:18Start up the front end.
16:19And so...
16:20So it's all pre-labelled.
16:21We're ready.
16:22Exactly right, yep.
16:23Tongue one, two, three, and four.
16:25Perfect.
16:26Yep.
16:27Tier right, tier left.
16:30Yep, perfect.
16:31Under strict supervision, I start collecting dugong tears.
16:35Great.
16:36That's how we get to see that little tier layer, yeah?
16:39Okay.
16:40So if you just pull it off right...
16:41Yep, that's perfect.
16:42Yeah, it comes out like a bit of snot out of your nose.
16:44Exactly right.
16:45Yeah, that's great.
16:46So what you can do, just cap that one.
16:48Cap that one.
16:49And that's how we get the tiers.
16:50Thank you for letting me look at your eyes, darling.
16:53We've got two lips.
16:54Yeah.
16:55Lockie also collects samples from the nostrils and saliva from inside the mouth.
16:59So it can be a little tricky to go up and access it in the mouth and on the tongue.
17:04These samples will help piece together a picture of this dugong's health, along with what and
17:10where he's been grazing.
17:12You know, that's how we learn about this population here in Northern Bay.
17:15It also helps us get a baseline for these guys as well.
17:17So what a healthy dugong looks like compared to what maybe a compromised dugong looks like.
17:22So it's all really good data to compare to all the other herd members as well.
17:26And with advancing technology, you know, one day down the track,
17:29we might be able to use these same samples a different way.
17:32It's like a body.
17:33It excretes information.
17:35It's all biological information, right?
17:37How long have they been out of water?
17:40How long has it been?
17:42How long?
17:4335.
17:44So we're just about that, aren't we?
17:46Yep.
17:48With the sampling complete, all hands are on deck to return this dugong safely back to his herd.
17:57heard.
18:24The samples that Janet's team collects are revealing that the dugongs rarely stray from
18:29home waters and have a very specific diet. So can the answer to their conservation be
18:41found on their dinner plate?
18:52The next morning, heavy rain and high winds makes it unsafe to catch dugongs. So, with
19:00the boats stuck in the harbour, I take advantage of the low tide to roam around their canteen.
19:07Is that a cone snail? Are you a cone snail? No, you're not. You're a hermit crab. Aww,
19:23what a cutie. I've been told that out here on the mudflats are a whole heap of seagrasses,
19:35and that's what the dugongs eat.
19:50It's really short. Really short, like someone's been over it with a mower.
19:58There's a fair amount of what I think is seagrass here, but it's all a bit underwhelming.
20:06For some reason, I thought that it would have to be really big plants because it's a really
20:12big animal. These plants are tiny. Like tiny, tiny. Less than a centimetre tall, some of them.
20:21Now, how much of this seagrass would a dugong have to eat? Like, they weigh up to 500 kilograms, right?
20:32They'd have to eat so much of this grass. It doesn't seem very effective.
20:42All this talk of eating has made me hungry. I'm off to find cake. And answers.
20:52I'm sort of glad we're not out on the boat today. That would be a bit miserable.
20:56Oh, I know.
21:00Thank you. Great, thank you very much. Thank you, thank you.
21:03I went out for a walk on the mudflats, and in my head I had thought that seagrass meadows
21:09would be like waving, like almost like tiny, you know, forests.
21:13It doesn't seem logical to me that an animal that big could rely on plants this big.
21:19I know. Yeah.
21:20So although it looks like there's not much seagrass there, most of the seagrass plant is
21:24underneath the sediment. So there are underground stems or rhizomes and also roots, and that stuff
21:30is really good food for dugongs. So it's full of sugars and starch and all sorts of goodies.
21:37So the leaves are really important for the dugongs because they're high in protein, but you've
21:41got all the goodness in the rest of the plant too.
21:43So do they sort of like hoover that up like a linguine? Like how do they actually get that
21:48into their mouth?
21:49Okay, so they feed in different ways depending on what they're feeding on. So for seagrasses
21:52that have upright shoots, they'll actually grasp those and pull them.
21:57And pull it out?
21:58Yep. And then the other seagrasses, they excavate. So for the really small stuff, they'll actually dig it up.
22:04These hoover-bulldozer hybrids have poor eyesight and among the smallest teeth of any mammal relative
22:11to their size. But they have such sensitive muzzle bristles that they can detect even the
22:17tiniest scrap of seagrass.
22:20So how much of that grass do they take in per day?
22:23Oh, huge amount. If they feed on that little round halophila species that they really like,
22:29they may need about 65 kilos fresh weight per day in order to survive. And then if they
22:36breathe, they need even more.
22:37So when a dugong comes along and eats 65 kilograms of grass in one day, how does the grass respond?
22:45Yeah, well, remember that they're not taking 100% of the seagrass in the feeding trails. So there are
22:51remnants left. And those rhizomes are able to send up new shoots. And so the way the seagrass
22:57responds is fairly rapid. But also because they grow fast, they don't lay down that high level of fibre. And so it ends up being perfect food for dugong.
23:06So they just keep regenerating it.
23:08So could you call them then an ecosystem engineer?
23:10Yeah, absolutely.
23:12This ecosystem is not just critical for dugongs. The seagrass is a valuable carbon store. And the beds act like an anchor, stabilising sediment along the coast and dampening wave action. But the seagrass is fragile.
23:29Here in northern Australia, some of the biggest threats to seagrasses at the moment are these extreme climate events.
23:35We know that with every flood effect or cyclone, there's direct damage to seagrass beds.
23:41Do you see that reflected in the dugongs?
23:43We do. And in fact, every time there's been a major rainfall event that's led to coastal flooding, they're having fewer carbs. And after some of the really major cyclones and floods, there have been zero carbs in the population. So their growth rates, their reproductive rates, how healthy they are, everything, their whole life history is determined by their food.
24:03Janet's work has revealed a really important secret. That yes, there are dugongs out there in the bay that are healthy, but that it might not always be like that. Because at this stage, we don't actually know how many extreme weather events the seagrass meadows are going to be able to absorb. And along with that, it means that the dugongs' future remains uncertain.
24:27It's my final day in Moreton Bay, and I'm heading out on one last trip with the team.
24:34Hey, can you guys get a big female this time, please?
24:46Dugongs can live for up to 70 years and are slow breeders. So with the population in decline, scientists need to know more about how they reproduce.
24:56That can only happen if they find a female.
25:05Janet has assessed over 250 dugongs out of the water.
25:22And while launching yourself at a dugong seems completely bonkers, it's been shown to have minimal impact on their stress physiology.
25:41Not the case for the jump team, who are put through the ringer by this powerful female.
25:53The team measure her substantial girth before sliding her onto the taxi stretcher.
26:06My main priority remains not drowning.
26:18I think this is what kids are talking about when they say they want to be a marine scientist.
26:24I'm pretty sure that this is exactly what they're talking about.
26:27This is the good part of it. But most of the time you just hold them there.
26:36OK, this is a big thing now.
26:38Preparations are made as the team get this female over onto the boat.
26:42And everyone gets to work as the 30 minute countdown begins.
26:49Right, right. 68. 68.
26:52Taking measurements.
26:53Yep, yep, staying on 68.
26:55Taking bloods.
26:57And placing an identification tag on her tail fluke.
27:01Can we have some hands too? Thank you. We're just going to roll slightly towards Merrick.
27:08Ready when you are.
27:10One of the most useful tools on the boat is an ultrasound machine.
27:15Vet, Claire Madden, uses it to take measurements such as blubber thickness.
27:21But it's also used to check whether a female dugong has a calf on board.
27:25And Claire confirms that this one is pregnant.
27:30So with the ultrasound we were able to see the fetus.
27:33Oh my goodness.
27:34Yeah.
27:35That is amazing.
27:36So when we measured her in water she had all the dimensions of a pregnant animal.
27:40So that gives us a clue.
27:41And then we come up through the ultrasound.
27:43And then the other thing we do is from the poo sample we then measure progesterone
27:47and that will confirm the pregnancy test.
27:49The pregnancy test.
27:50Yeah, but we've seen the fetus so we know.
27:52That is so exciting.
27:55A baby dugong.
28:00Dugongs breed once every three to five years.
28:03And carry a single calf which they may nurse until they have another.
28:08It's a huge energetic investment.
28:14And for a home body that relies on a vanishingly specific diet, protecting the seagrass may be the key to protecting the dugong.
28:24This population of dugongs is incredibly special, not least of all because it is the most studied population in all of the world.
28:36More than that, the studies that are going on here right now, the techniques that they're developing are going to be key to the conservation of the dugong worldwide.
28:46They're going to be able to apply this Australian research to wherever the dugongs live.
28:51And hopefully that means that we're going to have many, many more decades to find out the secret lives of dugongs.
28:59Next time, it's the Sunderpangolin.
29:00Look at that.
29:01Oh, no, no, no.
29:02The camera trap just got tricked.
29:03It's the Sunderpangolin.
29:04It's the Sunderpangolin.
29:05Look at that.
29:06Oh, no, no, no.
29:07The camera trap just got tricked.
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