Douglas Seifert's Image

Douglas encountered this feeding dugong in a sheltered, shallow bay on the Egyptian coast.

It was vigorously sucking up seagrass, its principal food, moving itself along on its flippers rather than its whale-like tail, which it uses for swimming. Every few minutes, after two metres or so of suction, it would swim to the surface, open its nostrils and take several deep breaths. 'I approached him very slowly to gain his trust and took his portrait by lying flat on the sea floor,' says Douglas. 'I understood why the local dive operators christened this particular individual Dyson - his industrial-power vacuuming technique was phenomenal.'