Florida’s Manatees are Starving to Death and Pollution is to Blame
Hundreds of the marine mammals have died off the coast of Florida due to what scientists believe is a lack of seagrass.
Florida’s manatees are perishing at an alarming rate in what scientists are calling a human-made famine.
As of mid-May, 738 manatee deaths had been recorded this year, according to reports from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The figure has already surpassed 2020’s year-long figure of 637, with estimates that this year’s death toll could exceed 1000.
Scientists believe that the loss of seagrass, critical to the marine mammals survival, is to blame, after tens of thousands of acres of the vegetation was decimated by algae blooms.
"Manatees depend as vegetarians on that seagrass in the Indian River Lagoon,” says Patrick Rose, executive director of the Save the Manatee Club. “We've lost more than 90% of the seagrasses. We had more than 70,000 acres of seagrass. We are down to just a fraction of that, and manatees are literally starving to death."
These algal blooms are said to be driven by human waste and pollutants entering the environment through sources such as sewage, septic drain fields, and fertilizers.
"When we have these catastrophic losses, we are talking about more than a thousand manatees dying this year," says Rose. "We've been polluting aquatic systems with our runoff from fertilizers and drainage, from stormwater, our septic systems are failing, we are not treating our wastewater to the standards they need to be, and nature can only absorb so much before it passes a tipping point."
Manatees are considered a threatened species with around 7,520 left alive today, according to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Rose believes that if the following winter is particularly cold, more manatees will die. "The cold, together with the malnutrition, can add up together and cause an animal to die when it might not have died from either source alone," Rose says.
Rep. Tyler Sirois (R-Merritt Island), whose district includes Brevard County, where almost 300 manatees have perished this year, is proposing legislation to help restore seagrass.
"My hope would be that in the future, developers that are involved in projects along our coastline would be able to invest in seagrass preservation and repairs the same way they would be able to invest in wetland mitigation," Sirois says.
Developers occasionally have initiatives that impact surface waters. In order to obtain a permit, they must mitigate those impacts.
"The concept for seagrass mitigation is not new. This legislation, I believe, was sponsored in 2006, and it was actually vetoed by then-Governor Charlie Christ. And in the governor's veto message, he actually explained that he didn't believe seagrasses served the public interest. We know a lot more about this issue today," Sirois says.
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