Surge of manatee deaths is feared with coming cold front
Authorities who are bracing for a wave of dead manatees and are attempting to feed those starving in Brevard County’s Indian River said Thursday that unseasonably warm weather so far has lessened the pace of the die-off.
But authorities are worried that a cold front in the coming week will force manatees to seek warm-water refuge at a Florida Power & Light Co. power plant in St. John, a community just south of Titusville along the Indian River, where there is nearly no food of any sort.
Florida and federal agencies have launched a type of command system, one more typically set up for hurricanes, oil spills and other big disasters, to rescue ailing manatees and retrieve carcasses along a stretch of Indian River from Titusville to Melbourne.
Manatees are in acute and chronic distress there because of the Indian River’s pollution-driven ecosystem collapse that has eradicated nearly all seagrass, the primary food for manatees. A seagrass rebound is likely to take several years at best, many experts fear.
“The lagoon looks like a desert,” said Martine de Wit, a veterinarian and scientist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, during a public briefing Thursday on the status of the Indian River’s manatees.
She said that starvation combined with stress from cold weather can be lethal for adult manatees, wrecking their metabolism and nutritional balance, which would otherwise tolerate winter weather. Rescued manatees in a state of starvation can require a year of intense veterinarian care.
More than 1,100 dead manatee were documented in Florida waters last year, which was nearly double the previous annual record. By far, the county with the most carcasses was Brevard, with nearly 360.
The die-off began in late 2019 and so far this year the rate of fatalities has not been as severe as a year ago, de Wit said.
The Florida wildlife commission and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have set up a field station for handling ailing and dead manatees and for an unprecedented attempt to feed lettuce to the animals. Feeding manatees is otherwise illegal and considered a form of harassment.
Wildlife rehabilitators such as SeaWorld use romaine lettuce to nurse stricken manatees back to health.
However, field station personnel who have distributed lettuce near the power plant for about a month have not seen evidence that manatees are eating it.
“This is a learning process for us,” said Ron Mezich of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
“At this point the animals aren’t recognizing it as a food source or taking it as a food source.”
Mezich said lettuce has been distributed on and under the river’s surface and in a number of locations. “We are confident that some point we will find a trigger that works.”