This was continued from Blue Carbon Measurement Training, which part of Dugong and Seagrass Conservation Project (DSCP) in Indonesia, organized by Director of Conservation and Marine Biodiversity together with Marine Research Center-Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries; Oceanography Research Center (Pusat Penelitian Oseanografi/P2O-LIPI), Marine and Fisheries Faculty-IPB also WWF-Indonesia. The training was held to be two parts, the first one was in Marine Research Center (P2O-LIPI) North Jakarta on October 16th and 17th 2018, and the rest was in Pari Island, Seribu Islands-Jakarta on October 18th and 19th 2018. The project had invited so many stakeholders, like governments, academicians, NGOs also business people.
Also read :Center For Marine Studies FMIPA UI Joined to Blue Carbon Measurement Training
Training and Management Coordinator of Center for Marine Studies of FMIPA UI, Fika Afriyani was still participated the project as one of representation for academicians. Center for Marine Studies has a role to give some base education training not only for the students of Universitas Indonesia, especially in Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences but also for another faculty student by doing Youth Program. Youth Program is annual program from Center for Marine Studies which aims to give conservation education for young generation (10-17 years old).
There’s still lack of information or knowledge from citizen about Dugong. Even sometimes it commons to know that Dugong can be eaten, same like another sea animal. So that it is important to know and spread the information about Dugong and it’s habitat, to raise the awareness from citizen because of Dugong status is already on IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The first thing that we need to know to protect Dugong is conserve the seagrass bed as it’s habitat to eat. Seagrass is known as Dugong main food. This Dugong Project was focused on seagrass community structure training and also how to track Dugong existence by not only knowing the feeding trails, but also by doing interview to the villagers who live around coastal area and by doing mapping.
Saving Dugong is important to save the sustainability of the ecosystem, because if there’s one disappeared from the ecosystem, there would be something wrong from the food chain. Both Dugong and human are mammals and have role in food chain. The balance of the role for each population very important to save.
