International Manatee Day

The world celebrated International Manatee Day on Sept. 7 to raise awareness about the protection, conservation, and research needs of manatees and their habitats. A manatee is a large, fully aquatic, mostly vegetarian mammal also known as a sea cow.

If we start at the beginning of the manatee story, we have to go back into the geologic past almost 60 million years to the Paleocene epoch. At that time, there was a land-based superorder of mammals called Afrotheria. This superorder gave rise to groups of mammals like elephants, dugongs, manatees, and aardvarks. Similar to other marine mammals such as seals and whales, the ancestors of manatees once walked on land, later evolving to live in the water.

There are four living species of Trichechidae in the order Sirenia. The order includes the dugong, the West Indian manatee, the West African manatee, and the Amazonian manatee. The species Pezosiren portelli was called the walking manatee because it is an extinct link to the manatee’s closest walking relative dating to approximately 50 million years ago. 

The order Sirenia also included a species that is now extinct. During the last ice age, there was a golden age of Arctic sea cows that thrived in the cold waters. This species was larger than all the rest, reaching 30 feet and 22,000 pounds. These gentle giants had no defense and therefore became one of the first species driven to extinction by man. The Steller's sea cow was thought to be gone by 1780, when no sea cows were known to exist in the Arctic.

The Steller's sea cow was named after explorer and naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller, who discovered the sea cows off an unnamed island in 1741, along the Alaskan coast. He was part of the Vitus Bering expedition, whose goal was to discover a sea route from Siberia to America. After his discovery, the Arctic sea cow, which was already pushed to the brink of extinction by indigenous peoples, was doomed.

Before 1800, humans had no concept of extinction, and had no idea that a species could vanish from the Earth. The Steller's sea cow was one of the first species that brought the concept of extinction into popular culture.

We are so fortunate to have such a special creature in our area. The Florida (West Indian) manatees spend their winters in the relatively warm waters of the Florida Springs. Florida is not the only state with manatees in the United States, but it has by far the most. In the summer months, manatees live in the warm ocean waters, traveling as far as Mexico, Cuba, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, and occasionally Texas and Mississippi.

Manatees will be in our area until the temperature of the ocean dips below approximately 70 degrees. Places on our island for viewing manatees include the city marina near downtown and shoreline docks and parks along the Amelia River. For this year's winter viewing, mark your calendar for February and visit Florida springs such as Blue Springs State Park in Orange City or Three Sisters Springs, a unit of the Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge, where you can actually swim with the manatees. 

There are approximately 10,000 Florida manatees. They are having a hard time with the overcrowding of Florida’s waterways. Manatee conservation efforts include habitat and spring restoration, protective regulations like speed limits on the waterways, and the rescue and rehabilitation of animals that encounter fast-moving boats.

Occasionally, emergency relief efforts take place, such as the feeding of manatees during a year when the seagrass, their natural food source, was destroyed by pollution. 

The manatee has been Florida’s official state marine mammal since 1975 and, unfortunately, is listed as a threatened species due to habitat loss, injuries and deaths from boat strikes, and lack of food. 

To assist manatees in the state of Florida, go to Save the Manatee.