Manatee Awareness Month
November is Manatee Awareness Month, a time when these lovable sea cows, Florida’s state marine mammal, move to warmer waters in Florida. Listed as threatened, the manatee faces a variety of threats including collisions with boats, habitat loss, cold stress, toxic effects of red tide and other harmful algal blooms, harassment and entanglement.
Manatees cannot survive for long periods in cold water, as they will go into shock and can die, so when the water temperature dips below 68° F, Florida manatees require warm water habitats. The official winter manatee season began on November 15th when a number of seasonal slow-speed manatee protection zones entered into effect, and boaters are urged to be careful when boating at this time of year as manatees are on the move.
Historically, manatees in Florida relied on natural springs. Florida has the largest concentration of natural artesian springs in the world (more than 1,000), but unfortunately, many springs have been altered, degraded and even lost completely due to groundwater pumping for urban and agricultural development. At the same time, we’ve built electric power plants and other structures that produce artificial sources of warm water, and many manatees have learned to rely on the outflow to provide warm water habitat. Whether natural or man-made, manatees depend on a warm place to spend the coldest days of winter.
I live and work in St. Petersburg, Florida and the two main manatee overwintering sites near me are an interesting contrast. There is the most important natural warm-water aggregation site on the Gulf coast of Florida, Three Sisters Springs and other springs in Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge and throughout Kings Bay, and then there is Tampa Electric Company’s Big Bend coal-fired electric power plant in Apollo Beach. Hundreds of manatees will seek shelter in these waters on the coldest days of winter.
Warm water aside, the conditions at both sites are quite different and pose a variety of challenges to manatees. The Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge was established specifically to protect manatees, but every winter upon their arrival, manatees encounter crowds of people in the water whose careless behaviors — touching, blocking them from moving and even trying to ride them — have forced them to turn around and head back to colder water. While it’s understandable that visitors to Kings Bay are excited for the chance to see manatees in the wild, we need to ensure that manatees can rest at Three Sisters and other springs free from human disturbance when temperatures drop.
While the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has made improvements in the last few years, including opening a viewing platform to observe manatees from the land and increasing monitoring of human and manatee use of Three Sisters Springs, we believe FWS needs to do more to address chronic overcrowding and harassment of manatees in Kings Bay. The best option would be to close the springs to in-water viewings during the manatees’ winter stay (November 15 — March 31), since visitors can view manatees from the boardwalk .
Unfortunately, the agency continues to allow visitors to swim with the manatees, and FWS closes the springs all day or part of the day only during extremely cold weather events. For the last three winters, FWS put interim measures in place to improve manatee protection at Three Sisters Springs. They kept vessels out of the springs, closed certain sections when manatees were present, and began actively enforcing the rules against harassing manatees.
FWS is implementing similar measures again this winter. The agency will make day-to-day decisions about whether the springs should remain open to in-water visitors based on analysis of movements of tagged manatees combined with environmental information such as water temperature and level in the Gulf of Mexico, Crystal and Salt Rivers and local springs within the Kings Bay. The Service will close Three Sisters Springs to human activity when Gulf temperatures at Shell Island drop to 62.6°F and the springs will remain closed until temperatures rise above that for 24 hours or longer. The effort by the FWS to improve conditions for manatees is commendable, but Defenders and our allies continue to request that Three Sisters Springs be protected as a full winter manatee sanctuary, so that in-water viewing does not disturb manatees. We have also requested new sanctuaries at House and Jurassic Springs, and a strict no-touch policy in these areas to give manatees a place to rest undisturbed through the winter.
At Big Bend, on the other hand, manatee sanctuary regulations are enforced, prohibiting human entry into the area where manatees congregate to take shelter. A manatee viewing boardwalk and education center allow people to view the manatees from land. Ben Prater, Defenders’ Southeast Program Director, and I recently visited the Manatee Viewing Center in Apollo Beach. Manatees congregate in the canal behind the plant where once-through cooling technology is used, which discharges artificially heated water into the canal.
While it was exciting for us to watch so many manatees together, it is kind of a shame to have to see them in the shadow of a power plant. Future availability of warm water remains a serious challenge to long-term manatee conservation, as around 60% of the manatee population has become dependent on artificial sources of warm water.
The failure or closure of electric plants could mean death for many of these manatees, which may only know these locations as an escape from cooler winter waters. These discharge canals are designated manatee sanctuaries because they are so critical to the species’ survival; some power plants host over a thousand manatees during cold weather events, making these groups of animals extremely vulnerable in the event of a power failure or outbreak of disease. Power plants and other artificial sources of warm water are uncertain and are not sustainable for future generations, so it is imperative that we protect natural manatee habitat, including travel corridors and foraging and resting areas.
Defenders is dedicated to restoring natural springs and protecting coastal habitat for manatees, establishing refuges and sanctuaries that keep them safe from collisions with speeding boats. Our ongoing work to improve protections for manatees in Kings Bay in Crystal River is a primary example of this work. We are also working with government agencies, power companies and other organizations to create a plan to transition manatees from artificial sources of warm water.
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