Researchers gain insights on manatees
SAVANNAH — With the help of satellites, a group of tagged manatees is helping to reveal how the giant mammals traverse the waters along Georgia’s coast.
Workers from wildlife agencies and organizations in Georgia and Florida netted eight manatees in Cumberland Sound in late May and early June, The Savannah Morning News reported.
With a helicopter helping spot the animals, a custom manatee capture boat was used to encircle them with a net so they could be examined and fitted with satellite tracking devices.
The GPS data showed that the manatees regularly venture into Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, they’re able to find artificial freshwater sources to drink from, and a few have traveled into the open Atlantic venturing as far as 5 miles offshore.
Biologists are also confirming things they long suspected but had no way to prove, such as the importance of the Intracoastal Waterway — a narrow passage of natural and dredged rivers between the mainland and barrier islands — for manatees moving along the Georgia coast.
“The Intracoastal Waterway is like a manatee highway,” DNR wildlife biologist Clay George said. “But the ICW is also a primary passageway for boats moving up and down the coast, so this behavior may place manatees at added risk of boat strikes.”
LOMPOC, Calif. — A former member of the U.S. Air Force faces charges including involuntary manslaughter in connection with a head-on crash that killed two people a year ago in California.
KEYT-TV reported that a federal indictment also accuses Shaquille Lindsey,
Boat strikes are a major source of injury and mortality for manatees, a population that is estimated at 6,000 individuals in the Southeast. Since 2000, boat collisions have caused 27 percent of manatee mortalities documented in Georgia, highlighting the need to better understand manatee movements in the state, the Savannah newspaper reported.
The project is expected to help document migratory paths and habitat use in the region, collect baseline data to help assess manatee health and map the protected species’ movements near the submarine base. It involves Sea to Shore Alliance, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the Georgia Aquarium.
NEW YORK — A doctor who appears to have been the target of a former physician who started shooting at a hospital, killing one person and injuring six, said he has no idea why he would have been singled out.
Dr. Kamran Ahmed told the New York Post he wasn’t the only one Dr. Henry Bello had a problem with.
However, “he never argued with me,” Ahmed said. “I don’t know why he put my name.”
A law enforcement official told The Associated Press that Bello arrived at Bronx Lebanon Hospital in the Bronx on Friday with an assault rifle, which was bought in upstate New York about a week earlier, hidden under his lab coat and asked for a doctor he blamed for his having to resign, but the doctor wasn’t there at the time. The law enforcement official wasn’t authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Ahmed, who specializes in the early detection and treatment of dementia, said Bello “had a problem with almost everybody, so I’m not the only one. That’s why they fired him, because so many people complained.”
Authorities said Bello went to the 16th and 17th floors and started shooting anyway, killing Dr. Tracy Sin-Yee Tam, who, like him, was a family medicine doctor. 23, of Georgia, of driving under the combined influence of both alcohol and marijuana, and while using his cell phone.
Prosecutors say Lindsey allegedly drove his car into oncoming traffic while going more than 15 miles over the speed limit near Vandenberg Air Force Base in August 2016.