Dead sea cow pictures taken in India, not Sri Lanka

"A rare marine species, a sea cow, was found dead and washed ashore in the Mannar Gulf sea area," reads a Tamil-language post shared September 19, 2025 on the Facebook account of a Sri Lankan media organisation.

The mentioned gulf refers to the body of water between Sri Lanka and India.

Pictures included in the post show a lifeless sea cow, also called dugong, a vulnerable marine species that has protected status under Sri Lankan law (archived link).

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Screenshot of the misleading post, taken September 30, 2025

Several mainstream media outlets in Sri Lanka published similar reports, while the claim also spread widely among Sri Lankan Facebook, X and Instagram users.

But Sri Lanka's Department of Wildlife Conservation refuted the circulating posts.

"The incident was reported in India," Ranjan Marasinghe, the agency's director general, told AFP on September 24, 2025.

He added no such incident was recently reported in Sri Lanka.

The agency separately dismissed the claims in a Facebook post on September 21 (archived link).

"Some local media yesterday... reported that a dead body of a sea cow (dugong) was found on the southern coast of Mannar," the statement says.

"However, wildlife officials stated that no such dead body of a dugong or any similar marine mammal was found on the Mannar coastline or anywhere else on the Sri Lankan shoreline."

A keyword search on Google found a report from India's The Hindu newspaper on September 19 about a dead sea cow found on Sethukkarai beach in Ramanathapuram, a city in India's Tamil Nadu state (archived link). 

The report includes a picture, credited to the newspaper's photographer L. Balachandar, that closely matches the circulating visuals (archived link).

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Screenshot comparison between a picture in the misleading posts (L) and a corresponding photo from The Hindu newspaper