By April Day, Director of Publishing at Save the Water™ | March 31, 2022
Florida’s manatees made sailors dream of beautiful women. Now, however, people’s pollution is killing manatees. In brief, people’s pollution causes the manatees’ natural food, mainly seagrass, to die. As a result, the manatees are starving. So people have stepped up and fed manatees. But at thousands of pounds of food daily, that help is probably coming to an end at the end of March.
Manatees Are Dying
Experts estimate that there are only about 5,700 to 7,500 manatees in Florida. Last year, over 1,100 manatees died. Two key factors contribute to these deaths: cold weather and starvation. This article focuses on the manatees’ starvation.
Manatees eat seagrass. They depend on it as their main source of food. But decades of agricultural and development pollution have killed off large areas of seagrass. The years of food shortages have come one after another. This year, until the first half of March alone, about 420 manatees died.
What Humans Did to Help the Manatees
Although, under normal circumstances, officials outlaw people feeding manatees, this year and last year proved not to be normal. As a result, wildlife officials have been feeding the manatees fresh lettuce and cabbage because the animals are starving. To try to make sure manatees don’t associate humans with food, the humans hide when they throw the food. In this way, they hope that manatees will survive in the wild in the long term.
In addition to feeding manatees, humans are also rescuing manatees that need medical attention. Motor boats, hunger, and pneumonia all threaten and hurt manatees. Humans care for these hurt manatees in rehabilitation sites across the United States. Manatees have long memories. Therefore, humans try to release the manatees in their traditional homes if and when the manatees recover and become healthy. If humans can’t release the manatees into their homes because there’s no more food there, humans try to release the manatees where there’s food in the wild for them.
Other Humans Are Trying to Help
While making sure that manatees don’t die out right now is important, other humans are taking a longer view. A coalition of conservation groups filed a lawsuit against the United States Wildlife Service for failing to expand the areas called “critical habitats” for manatees. This coalition hopes that the lawsuit will get the federal agency to revise regulations to expand the areas that are critical habitats for manatees, address pollution that causes harmful algal blooms, and stop the ongoing loss of seagrass.
What You Can Do to Help
Here are ways that you can help:
- Try to reduce pollution.
- Stop relying on fertilizer in your gardening.
- Learn about technologies that treat harmful algal blooms.
- Keep up to date about the situation.
- Report sick or injured manatees to 888-404-FWCC (888-404-3922) or text #FWC or *FWC.
