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Daily Bucket: Florida Manatees [1]
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Date: 2025-04-16
The Daily Bucket is a regular series from the Backyard Science group. Here we talk about Mother Nature in all her glory, especially the parts that live nearby. So let us know (as close as you are comfortable) where you are and what's going on around you. What's the weather like? Seen any interesting plants, bugs or critters? Are there birds at your feeders? Deer, foxes or snakies in your yard? Seen any cool rocks or geological features? Post your observations and notes here. And photos. We like photos. :)
A few days ago while walking along the St Pete waterfront I happened to see a bunch of tourists looking at something in the Bay, and found that it was a group of Manatees snacking on one of the seagrass beds in the shallow water. I like Manatees so anytime I see one I always stop whatever I am doing to watch, even though all one usually sees is a nose poking up for a breath and maybe an expanse of “back” every once in a while.
The West Indian Manatee (Trichechus manatus) is a large aquatic mammal that is native to the coastal areas of the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean and the northern parts of South America. (The Florida population is sometimes listed as a separate subspecies, Trichechus manatus latirostris.) West Indian Manatees can reach lengths of 10 feet and weigh as much as 1,200 pounds. There are three other members of the group Sirenidae—the West African Manatee (Trichechus senegalensis), the Amazon Manatee (Trichechus inunguis), and the more distantly related Dugong (Dugong dugon) from the Indian Ocean. A fifth species, the much-larger Steller’s Sea Cow (Hydrodamalis gigas) once lived in the Bering Sea but was driven extinct by human hunters in the 1770’s. All of the existing Sirenids are threatened or endangered in the wild.
Manatees are totally aquatic and never leave the water. Although they can enter both fresh and salt water, they require warm temperatures and are limited to tropical areas where the water temperature seldom goes below 70 degrees. They are often found in estuaries, rivers, canals, and freshwater springs connected to the sea.
Despite being large and muscular, they are very placid and slow-moving animals, paddling along slowly in search of the aquatic plants they graze on. They are very good swimmers, though, and often undertake long migrations. During warm summers they can sometimes be found in coastal areas as far north as Massachusetts.
As mammals, they surface every so often to breathe, often just protruding their nose above the water. They can hold their breath up to 20 minutes. Manatees eat up to 10% of their body weight a day in sea grasses and other aquatic plants. The upper lip is elongated and prehensile, serving as a tool for the limbless animal to grasp plants. (The elongated upper lip also gives a clue to the Manatee’s ancestry—the fossil record shows that the Sirenids evolved about 60 million years ago from four-footed wading mammals closely related to the elephants.) In many tests, Manatees have demonstrated a level of intelligence similar to sea lions or dolphins.
Manatees, like most large mammals, have a very slow rate of reproduction, with just one calf every three or four years. They don’t have a regular breeding season, though most calves are born in the spring. Pregnancy lasts for 12 months. At birth, the newborn Manatee is about 3.5 feet long and weighs about 50 pounds. Young Manatees stay with their mother for about two years before going off on their own, reaching sexual maturity at about five years old.
As Florida’s human population grew in the 60’s and 70’s, the Manatees suffered devastating losses. Commercial and residential development of seashores led to a huge loss in seagrass beds, one of the Manatee’s primary food sources. Another widespread cause of death was collisions with motorboats—the slow-moving Manatees cannot get out of the way of a fast-moving boat. Even today, nearly every surviving Manatee you see will have a network of scars on its back caused by a boat propeller (field researchers use these scars to identify each individual Manatee). To protect the species, the West Indian Manatee was included in the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act and was listed in the 1973 Endangered Species Act. In 1978, Florida passed its own Manatee Sanctuary Act. A massive effort was launched to restore the lost seagrass bed habitats, to establish “no wake” zones and manatee sanctuaries where motor boats are prohibited, and to educate boaters about protecting Manatees. It is estimated today that there are about 10,000 Manatees living in Florida—about twice as many as there were just a couple decades ago.
You can always find something interesting if you just look for people pointing their cellphones
Manatees in the Bay
A nose
Another nose
A rescue at the Zoo Tampa’s Manatee Hospital, so you can see what they look like
And now it is your turn: what’s paddling by in your neck of the woods?
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