Stars and Stripes Sunday(2001/01/28)

Fighting for the 'mermaids'

Okinawan activists link fate of dugongs with future of U.S. bases

"We don't want any military bases. We want to maintain our community, where people and dugongs and other animals can harmoniously live together." - Takuma Higashionna, director of the Okinawa Dugong Network

by David Allen/Stars and Stripes

Dugongs are a rallying cause for anti-base activists on Okinawa.
Opponents of a prposed U.S. Marine air station hope the creatures will save Oura Wan Bay, the site of the Marine's Camp Shwab, from further encroachment by the U.S. military.
Dugongs, saltwater cousins of Florida's freshwater manatees, are at risk of extinction, especially in Okinawan waters, where few have been spotted in recent years, a survey has found. Their population is about 100,000 worldwide, mostly off the coasts of the Philippines, Indonesia and northern Australia.
According to legend, sailors mistook these large animals for mermaids and credited them with saving their shipwrecked comrades.
Okinawa is believed to be their northernmost habitat, but sightings are rare. No one knows how many live in Okinawan waters and whether anything can be done to save them, especially because they face dangers perhaps immediate than the proposed air base.
For example, each year one or two dugongs are caught in fishing nets or found washed up on Okinawan beaches. Occasionally, the animal is found alive and released.
"The very first thing Japan needs to do is to stop net-fishing," said Senzo Uchida, a marine life researcher studying the dugong habitats of Okinawa.
He wants dugongs, considered a "vulnerable species" by the Switzerland-based World Conservation Union, to be declared endangered. He is afraid they will end up like their cousin, the Steller's Sea Cow, which was over-hunted and became extinct about 230 years ago.
Uchida said the nets, called drift nets or gill nets, are used throughout the world. They are made of strong, fine filament and cast in the ocean to catch schools of fish. Every year, thousands of air-breathing dolphines, whales, seals and sea birds get snared in the huge underwater spider webs and drown before fishermen can free them.
Many countries have banned gill-netting, but it is still common among Japanese fishermen.
Uchida says gill-netting should be banned by Japan and that local fishermen be compensated.
Uchida urged the Japanese government for years to conduct a study to assess how many dugongs live in Okinawan waters and where they feed.
Such a survey began in late October and concludes in April. It is being conducted by the Defense Facilities Administration Agency to assess whether dugongs would be threatened by the construction of an airport planned to replace the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station in central Okinawa.
An aerial survey of the island's waters turned up one adult dugong swimming several miles north of the proposed airport location and one dead adult female dugong ensnared in a fishing net about a mile east of the site.
But even on dugong that gets trapped in nets and dies every year is too many, say Uchida and the Okinawa Dugong Network, the biggest of several environmental groups formed to save the creatures and oppose the new base.
Uchida said there have been 18 confirmed sightings of dugongs since 1979, most of them beached carcasses. The largest number of dugongs sighted at any one time off Okinawa is believed to be six, in 1998.
"There has been so little study done that no one can be sure how many there are, especially since the dugong is a gentle, shy creature that mostly hides during the day and feeds mostly at night," Uchida said.

photo: This male adult dugong was captured after being trapped in a net off Kin in 1992. He was transferred to the Okinawa Expo Aquarium in Motobu. Photo courtesy of Senzo Uchida photo: Takuma Higashionna, director of the Okinawa Dugong Network, outside his organization's headquarters in northeast Okinawa. He says no U.S. military base should be built in Henoko.

At on time, scientists thought Okinawa's dugongs were strays from the much larger dugong population in the Philippines.
"But from the evidence of baby dugongs being caught in nets, it is apparent they make their homes here year-round," Uchida said. "The distance from the Philippines is too far for a mother dugong to swim when pregnant or with a pup."
Dugongs live to be about 70. Females give birth about once every three to seven years, and the pups suckle for 18 months or more. That means the population grows slowly, Uchida said.
An adult dugong is about 10 feet long and has a face like a walrus, bright gray skin and a dolphin tail. They are similar to the manatees that swin in the fresh waters of Florida, but manatees have paddle-shaped tails. Both species have two armlike limbs used for steering and scooping up food. Also, male dugongs have two tusks and the manatees do not.
In Florida, the manatees are an endangered species and protected by U.S. law.
"If the U.S. government protects manatees in their own country, I want to ask why it is all right for them to not protect dugongs in Japan?" said anti-base activist Takuma Higashionna, director of the Okinawa Dugong Network.
Higashionna's group has been successful in getting the word out that Okinawa's dugongs are in danger.
During the Group of Eight Summit in Nago last July, journalists were bombarded with dugong information. Recently, Higashionna took his case to the World Conservation Union, which adopted a resolution in October calling for the United States and Japan to take measures to protect Okinawa's dugongs.
"If construction of an airport takes place in the area, it would be a threat to the coral reefs and grazing grounds for dugongs in the Henoko area," the resolution states. It states that the air station also would threaten the habitats of other endangered species, such as the Okinawa rail (a quaillike bird) and Noguchi woodpecker.
Representatives of the United States and Japan abstained from the vote. The resolution was a warning to the two governments and has no binding power.
"Attending the IUCN[World Conservation Union] convention was an eye-opener for me," said Higashionna on a rainy afternoon in his cramped, one-room pre-fab office a few miles from Camp Schwab. Tha walls are covered by "Save the Dugong" posters painted by area school children. On the seawall across the street is a mural of playful dugongs.
"I went to the convention only as an observer, but the members invited me inside the conference hall and let me participate in the convention," Higashionna said.
"They gave me the opportunity to speak to the audience, the same as the official Japanese and U.S. delegations. Such a thing would be unthinkable in Japan.

photo: An anti-base billboard along Highway 329 near the site of a proposed Marine air station on Okinawa. photo: Homemade signs and billboards protesting a proposed Marine air station are common sight around Oura Wan Bay. Protesters say a new base would harm dugongs. This poster says: "Only our ocean can nourish dugongs in Japan. Be proud of it." figure: Dugong sightings / Points where the sea cows have been found off Okinawa from 1979 to 2000.

"I asked a U.S. delegate if the airport was worth the sacrifice of even on dugong, and he could not answer my question. I know the U.S. government contends it is not responsible for the airport or the extiction of the dugongs, that it is the Japanese government that has to make decision and pay for the facility. But it is the U.S. that would use the airport, so it cannnot be said that they bear no responsibility."
The Marine Corps' official position on the dugong debate is that it's a matter between Okinawa and Tokyo.
"The government of Japan and the Okinawa prefectural government are currently studying a variety of issues, including environmental impact of the site," said 2nd Lt. Neil A. Ruggiero, a Marine media officer. "It is the right and responsibility of the host nation to conduct these studies, and it would be inappropriate for the U.S. Marines to be making any plans independent of the [government of Japan]."
Ruggiero said there have been no sightings of dugongs by Marine Corps personnel. Marines are not involved in the DFAA's survey.
"The Marine Corps is allowing access to military water areas for the purpose of conducting the survey," he said.
Higashionna would like to see military activities in the areas cease.
He says he started working to oppose the airport and save the dugongs when he discovered that a company he worked for would be involved in the construction.
"I could not lend my hand to the building of a military base in my hometown," he said. He now works as a full-time "ecology guide."
Other area residents are not sure what effect the proposed air station will have on the dugongs.
"I haven't seen any dugongs since I was 18 years old and saw one off Teniya [a village north of Henoko]," said Seijin Oshiro, 78, who can be found most weekdays working with his wife on their small fishing boat in the waters off Henoko.
"Ever since, I have not seen the animal, but I know they are somewhere near this area."
He said he occasionally sees evidence of the creatures.
"When a dugong is feeding, we can tell from 1,000 meters away because the waters turn a reddish color."
Dugongs plow underwater furrows through the thick seagrass beds.
"It is hard to tell how the new airport will affect the dugongs, or the fishing in this area," Oshiro said. "Already, when the military does its exercises in the waters here, all the fish go away and we cannot fish."
The airport, however, will be built either on reclaimed land or on an anchored platform close to shore, he said.
"The dugong do not come that close to shore," he said. "They do not come inside the reef and they never appear in the daytime."
Nearby, Kinjiro Tamashiro, 65, and his wife, Toyo, 65, repaired a net used to cultivate mozuku, a local seaweed.
"I last saw a dugong when I was 17 or 18 years old," Tamashiro said. He sat cross-legged on the dock tying new knots in the net. He was skeptical about dugong sightings reported last year by anti-base activists.
"I have seen the pictures of dugongs swimming in the ocean, but how can you tell that it was in waters near Henoko?" he asked. "There's no mountain or anything else that can identify the location."
Besides, he thought the question of saving the dugongs and the fishing industry in northeast Okinawa was moot.
"I don't worry much because there are not many fishermen around here any more and no young people to take after us. The fishing is not good."
But that's not the point, says anti-base activist Higashionna.
"Our ultimate goal is not only to protect the dugong, but to protect our natural environment," he said. "We don't want any military bases. We want to maintain our community, where people and dugongs and other animals can harmoniously live together."

photo: Henoko fisherman Seijin Oshiro and his wife, Hiroe, prepare for a day of fishing in the waters of northeast Okinawa, where environmentalists say a planned Marine air base endangers the small dugong population. photo: Kinjiro Tamashiro, who cultivates seaweed in an area earmarked for a new Marine air base, last saw a dugong almost 40 years ago. photo: Three men examine a dead dugong found beached near Ginoza, on Okinawa's northeast shore. Many of the dead dugongs found on island beaches are believed to have died after drowning in gill nets used by fishermen. Photo courtesy of Senzo Uchida photo: Senzo Uchida, director of the Okinawa Marine Life Center at Expo Park in Motobu, says a detailed study of the dugong population in Okinawa's waters is essential.