I've been recently thinking,"Why aren't dugong's in more zoos / aquariums?" Japan and Sydney have successfully kept them. Since the animals have a fairly wide range it seems to me that a deal could be worked out with a country to acquire a couple. I would think this animal would also be extremely popular with the public.
About the only place I've had the opportunity to properly look is Cow Bay in Queensland (named after the dugongs, as it happens). There were animals surfacing repeatedly out in the bay but they were consistently too far away or were too briefly at the surface. I wasn't sure what they were, because they seemed too small for dugongs. Couldn't really think what else they would be though, and I didn't really know how much of its nose a dugong puts above water when breathing. Finally one came up close enough and for long enough to get it in the binoculars. It was a green turtle. I've been to the Singapore Underwater World and Sydney Aquarium though, and they have (or had, in the former case) dugongs. The only others I know of are Toba Aquarium in Japan and the Jaya Ancol Oceanarium in Jakarta (I'm not sure if the latter still has them either). There are several places in Australia which should be pretty reliable for wild dugongs. I just need to go there really.
Jakarta had at least one as of August 2016. I have a feeling there was a story a while back about Indonesian authorities finding dugongs tethered to the sea bed somewhere, and the suspicion was that they were to be traded, so it's possible there are some some places they shouldn't be.
a quick Google found a couple of stories involving dugongs being tethered as potential tourist-attractions (as opposed for export). But yes I wouldn't be surprised if there are dugongs in aquariums unknown to me. Video: Dugongs chained and caged by Indonesian fishermen for tourist dollar (this one in Indonesia) Vanuatu - The Dugong & Seagrass Conservation Project (this one from Vanuatu)
From the thread "Why no platypus in zoos outside Australia?" thread, Tatsuslava said about manatees and dugongs. So I create I thread for that. First,how to distinguish manatee between dugongs? From my knowledge, Manatees have a large, horizontal, paddle-shaped tail with only one lobe, which moves up and down when the animal swims. Dugongs have tail flukes with pointed projections, like a whale with a slightly concave trailing edge.(yes,I copy that) Second, how well are manatee and dugongs kept in captivity? Most of the manatees) you have seen is probably the West Indian species. this including all zoo/aquarium in Europe, and possibly all in the US. Amazonian manatee,as far as I know, are only kept in one aquarium except in south america(where there is a few holders?)And that aquarium is atagawa tropical & alligator garden in Japan. West african manatee is hold in some Chinese aquarium, as well as toba aquarium in japan.Some holder in china are Chimelong and yantai. Dugong is held in three aquarium,as far as I know.I believe that toba have one, jakarta have one, and sydney have two.(Get information from wikipedia, I don't know if it's still update) At last, for Tatsuslava ,manatee is called 海牛 in chinese and dugong is called 儒艮.(i believe is produced geng1)
West Indian actually. When it comes to sirenians I've seen every species but the Amazonian manatee (not counting the dwarf species because eh...)
not everyone has the time or/and inclination to write trip threads, I know, so I was meaning more something along the lines of just a brief run-down of a collection, not even a review would be necessary. In this particular case I can't recall anything (at all) about Jaya Ancol having been posted on Zoochat other than passing mentions of dugongs being kept there. So I don't know anything about it.
