Drone photogrammetry reveals contrasting body conditions of dugongs across the Indo‐Pacific

Abstract The monitoring of body condition, reflecting the state of individuals' energetic reserves, can provide early warning signals of population decline, facilitating prompt conservation actions. However, environmental and anthropogenic drivers of body condition are poorly known for rare and elusive marine mammal species over their entire ranges. We assessed the global patterns and drivers of body condition for the endangered dugong ( Dugong dugon ) across its Indo‐Pacific range. To do so, we applied the body condition index (BCI) developed for the related manatee based on the ratio of umbilical girth (approximated as maximum width times π), to straight body length measured in drone images. To cover the entire dugong's range, we took advantage of drone footage published on social media. Combined with footage from scientific surveys, social media footage provided body condition estimates for 272 individual dugongs across 18 countries. Despite small sample sizes relative to local population sizes, we found that dugong BCI was better, that is, individuals were ‘plumper’, in New Caledonia, the United Arab Emirates, Australia and Qatar where populations are the largest globally. Dugong BCI was comparatively poorer in countries hosting very small dugong populations such as Mozambique, suggesting a link between body condition and population size. Using statistical models, we then investigated potential environmental and anthropogenic drivers of dugong BCI, while controlling for seasonal and individual effects. The BCI decreased with human gravity, a variable integrating human pressures on tropical reefs, but increased with GDP per capita, indicating that economic wealth positively affects dugong energetic state. The BCI also showed a dome‐shaped relationship with marine protected area coverage, suggesting that extensive spatial protection is not sufficient to maintain dugongs in good state. Our study provides the first assessment of dugong body condition through drone photogrammetry, underlining the value of this non‐invasive, fast and low‐cost approach for monitoring elusive marine mammals.