It was the Feast of the Three Kings last January 6 and a sea cow received the best gift from Filipino fisherman – a new lease on life. An endangered sea cow was rescued by a group of Filipino fisherman and was pushed back into open water after it was stranded off a beach in the western Philippines, reported AP last Jan 6, 2009.
Dugong dugon is a large marine mammal
According to the news article, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said two fishermen tied a rope around the refrigerator-sized mammal on Jan. 1, one day after it was trapped by low tide on the shore of Palawan island’s Puerto Princesa city. After recuperating in the waist-high water, the 8.5-foot-long animal was declared fit for release by WWF activists.
WWF said the gentle creatures, scientifically known as Dugong Dugon, had once plied the Philippine archipelago until hunting and habitat degradation wiped out most of the herds.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature has classified the species as vulnerable or facing a high risk of extinction. There are no estimates of how many still inhabit the shallow waters of the Indo-Pacific. Thriving populations are now protected in the Philippines’ northern Isabela province, the southern Mindanao region and Palawan, WWF said.
Meanwhile, here in the U.S., a 140-year old lobster was sent back to sea after a seafood restaurant in New York City granted him a reprieve. The giant lobster had been caught off Newfoundland, Canada, and lived in the restaurant’s tank for about 10 days before his release.
The 20-pound crustacean, named George, was returned to the wild Saturday in a rocky cove in Kennebunkport, Maine, less than a mile from the summer home of former President George H.W. Bush.
