PPG AQUARIUM AIDS IN RESCUE
Aquarium experts at Pittsburgh Zoo help with rescue of manatees
Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium staff recently assisted with other marine experts to help rescue 10 stranded manatees in South Carolina and relocate them to safer waters.
PPG Aquarium’s Paul Moylett, curator of aquatic life, and Joe Gaspard, director of conservation and science, were in the Palmetto State Nov. 28 to Nov. 30 to assist in a complex mission to capture the wild mammals before the water grew too cold and release them in Florida. Manatees cannot survive in waters colder than 60 degrees Fahrenheit.
“There were so many moving parts, and every one of them was vital in making this work safely for the animals,” said Mr. Gaspard. “Lots of people onsite and behind the scenes were needed to do this right.”
Sometimes called sea cows, manatees are just that — slow-moving aquatic herbivores that graze on seagrass, consuming as much as 20 percent of their weight in vegetation per day. Mature adults can measure more than 13 feet long and weigh nearly a ton. Trichechus manatus, the West Indian manatee, generally ranges from Guyana, South America, northward along the Caribbean coastline to the grassy brackish-water inlets of Georgia.
“We don’t know why or how they do this, but sometimes their migratory routes take them beyond their normal summer feeding grounds to places farther north,” said Mr. Gaspard. “It’s a growing problem — They sometimes congregate near artificial warm-water outflows, and that’s what happened. A group of about 50 manatees were traveling about 2 miles up and down [the Cooper River at Charleston] all summer.”
Most made it back to the river’s mouth before the autumn waters grew too cold, presumably to work their way south to Florida.
“But 10 of them didn’t get out,” Mr. Gaspard said. “We think they found some refuge in the warm-water outflow of a paper mill, but they couldn’t have stayed there much longer. We had to act quickly.”
Following a manatee protocol, paper mill staff notified the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which mobilized a large team of manatee experts from SeaWorld Orlando, Florida Fish and Wildlife, Sea to Shore Alliance, South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens, and others. Mr. Gaspard said he was called because of his prior experience handling manatees on a daily basis at a previous job at a public aquarium.
He invited Mr. Moylett, who had worked with him in similar operations.
“Going into it, we didn’t know exactly what they needed,” said Mr. Gaspard. “They had two boats, one with an open stern and the other with an open bow. We stretched a net across, circled as silently as possible and corralled them.”
In a very low-tech maneuver, team members jumped into the water and lifted the nettedmanatees — one weighing more than 1,400 pounds — intothe boat by hand.
“The animals didn’t necessarily want to get into the boat,” said Mr. Gaspard. “Some of us got a little roughed up by flippers and tails, but it’s really the safest way for the manatees and for us.”
An industrial crane hoisted the animals from the boats to the dock in Charleston where the PPG Aquarium staffers assisted in a health assessment before the mammals were loaded into trucks. They accompanied one or two manatees in the back of the truck during the long drive south to Jacksonville, Fla., then returned to Charleston to pick up another load until all 10 had been transported.
At the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens the manatees were examined again and nine were OK’d for release into the wild. Several were tagged for further study. One female showed signs of mild cold stress and was held for treatment before her release.
Ultimately the rescue went “smoothly” and safely for all the mammals involved — manatee and human. Mr. Gaspard called it “a good experience” for the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium even if it doesn’t have a manatee exhibit. The zoo recently joined the Florida-based Manatee Rescue and Rehabilitation Partnership.
Because they are slowmoving and vulnerable to injury by power boats and environmental pressures, West Indian manatees had hovered on the brink of distinction when they were first listed as endangered in 1973. At that time there were only a few hundred of the subspecies that lived in Florida. But because of preservation efforts, their populations have rebounded, and earlier this year the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reclassified them from “endangered” to “threatened.” Today there are more than 6,600 Florida manatees.
“I think it helps to show folks how everything is interconnected,” Mr. Gaspard said. “This zoo is an active member in wildlife conservation and has been involved in animal rescues all over the world. Saving wildlife is at the core of our mission.”
“The animals didn’t necessarily want to get into the boat. Some of us got a little roughed up by flippers and tails, but it’s really the safest way for the manatees and for us.” — Joe Gaspard, director of conservation and science at PPG Aquarium