Thailand’s Department of Marine and Coastal Resources has ordered its officials and asked the public, in the southern provinces of Trang and Krabi, to be on the lookout for suspicious activity in the feeding grounds of dugongs in the Andaman Sea after a dead dugong was found with its two incisor teeth, or tusks, removed.
The latest dead dugong was two metres long and weighed 250kgs. It was found on the beach in Ban Klong Nin on Lanta Yai Island of Krabi province on Friday, according to a report from the Marine and Coastal Resources Development and Research Centre in Phuket.
This is the fifth dead dugong found beached in Krabi in the past four months. Officials suspect that the missing incisors were taken by opportunists, but will need to wait for the autopsy to find the cause of death.
