Impacts on dugongs - The Great Barrier Reef: An Environmental History - page 105

Figure 7.5 Dugongs caught at Burrum Heads, c. 1937. Source: Record No. 286431, State
Library of Queensland, Brisbane
As a result, by around 1940, dugong populations were reported to be 'rapidly
diminishing in numbers' (Tennant, c. 1940, p49). Furthermore, no information
was published about dugong fishing elsewhere. Lack (1968) acknowledged that
commercial dugong fishing continued in 1940, with centres at Hervey Bay and
Torres Strait, and that 70 dugongs were caught in Hervey Bay during that year.
Intermittent fisheries continued to supply dugong oil for medical purposes and
for the manufacture of cosmetic creams, with around 200 dugongs being caught
annually at Burrum Heads alone: the annual harvest of that single operation
(illustrated in Figure 7.5) represents approximately 12 per cent of the total
estimated dugong population of Hervey Bay in 1999 (Preen and Marsh, 1995;
Marsh and Lawler, 2001) . 7 Given increasing concerns about the conservation of
marine wildlife species, commercial dugong fishing was prohibited in 1969 by a
Queensland Order in Council . By that year, Lack (1968, p5) stated, the dugong
herds on the South Queensland coast had been almost wiped out, although
scientific observations by Heinsohn et al. (1978) showed that large herds of
dugongs were nonetheless found in Moreton Bay in 1978.
The supply of dugong oil to Indigenous settlements,
1928-1976
During the period between at least 1928 and 1976, dugong products - particularly
dugong oil and meat - were supplied to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
communities in Queensland. In general, those products were obtained from
fisheries that operated intermittently, and on a limited scale, in several areas.
However, at some times and in some places, the capture of the animals occurred
on a relatively intensive basis. The dugong oil was used for medicinal purposes