Trapped: Maya the dugong is kept offshore, bound with rope that is tied to bamboo poles. Kiat locals have been keeping her since she was discovered caught in a fishing net when she was small. The village head, who said people call him Bapak Duyung, said tourists pay Rp 1.5 million (US$156) for dugongs to be brought out from the deep — most wanting to pose for photos or get near so strange a being, others perhaps motivated to try and collect a unique love potion. A sign along the main road marks the village as a “tempat wisata” (tourist destination) for those wanting an encounter with the hefty, placid mammals.

Maya, named after the pop singer Mayangsari who reportedly visited the village, has been kept by Kiat locals since she was a baby.

“We took her in and she slept in our homes when she was small. We gave her a mattress to sleep on,” Saban said.

Now an adult weighing hundreds of kilograms, Maya lives in the calm seas off Kiat, between the village and the tiny island of Ega near where she was originally discovered trapped in a net. Shafts of bamboo poke out of the water marking Maya’s current home, for she is bound by a rope attached to her tail that is affixed to those poles, able to wander as far as the length of rope allows.

“We have kept 30 dugongs here since they were children. They were all eventually freed. Maya is the only one we have now,” said Pak Duyung, whose real name is Sirajudin Jamal.

Abdurrahman Mahkatita, sitting on a bench beside the beach where Maya would later be placed for the benefit of the group visiting that day, described the village’s intimate connection with the marine mammals that are closely related to elephants, saying that dugongs frequently follow fishing boats and can be taught to come when called by tapping on the surface of the ocean.

And what do they eat? “Dugongs eat a type of seagrass,” he said, gesturing toward the expanse of glittering blue ocean in front of him. Maya can consume a fair amount, and must be moved from one section of sea to another every week after she has eaten all the available growth in one area.

The elderly farmer had many stories of dugongs and their habits, and when asked his age shrugged and said, “Oh I’ve been here since the Dutch were here, the Japanese too.”

Dugongs have been hunted for centuries for their meat and oil, Abdurrahman even saying, “Oh yes you can eat them” but indicating that it certainly was not common. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists the animals as “vulnerable” to extinction due to the destruction of their habitats and hunting, with the dugong’s closest relative, the Stellar’s sea cow, hunted to extinction centuries ago.

The mammals have a slow reproduction rate that contributes to their vulnerability, and are unique for their downturned snouts designed for grazing on the ocean floor and their paddle-like forelimbs. Pak Duyung showed off a set of dugong flippers he had preserved, the bones dried and alarmingly resembling the skeleton of a large human hand. “Some Chinese will pay Rp 1 million for half a finger. They use it for medicine,” he said.

The presence of dugongs clearly provides an economic boon to this tiny village of less than 100 families, with fishing and nutmeg farming the main sources of income. And few places in the world house the animals, a quick web search revealing that there are less than a handful of spots, including aquariums in Japan, Sydney and Singapore.

But Kiat’s self-styled tourist attraction — an off-the-beaten-path, DIY aquarium whose proceeds go directly to locals — certainly differs, offering an intimate encounter that creates a sense of pathos for the solitary, slow “mermaids” that a meeting through glass accompanied by informational displays might not.

Costly: Kiat village head Bapak Duyung shows off the dugong hands he has preserved. He said the bones can be sold at high prices to be used in traditional medicine. According to a number of people in the village, locals care for young dugongs in their own homes for a week at a time without returning them to the water. And what seemed to be at least half the Kiat residents turned out to observe Maya being brought onto land or to assist in carrying her to shore. As she lay on the beach, people began cleaning off the various oceanic parasites clinging to her scarred back, her body sparsely dotted with rough hair.

Maya blinked slowly a few times, and a single tear appeared along her right eye. One man from Jakarta gently swabbed it away with a tissue and carefully placed it in his pocket, ensuring that at least part of Maya will take on a new life, through insight if not incantation.

— Photos By JP/Deanna Ramsay