Zoo Tampa urges caution for manatees during spring break
Molly Lippincott, animal care manager for Zoo Tampa at Lowry Park, says just after winter manatees migrate to warm waters for spring. Since the warmer weather also means more boat traffic, everyone needs to act with caution to avoid injuring these gentle giants.
“Boats and manatees do not mix well, especially when there are a lot of them,” said Lippincott. “We need to know manatees are going to be moving this time of year especially, so we need to be looking out for them out on the waterways.”
The pandemic of 2020 left many people without recreation opportunities, Lippincott said. Boating was considered one of the safer activities, increasing the number of marine vessels being purchased and used in Florida.
“Because you don’t need a license to rent or purchase a boat in Florida, many people come here from other places in the United States and don’t know anything about manatees. We are trying to make people aware that they live here in Florida and that they are very vulnerable to boat strikes.”
Because they feed primarily on seagrass vegetation, manatees are a shallow water species, explained Lippincott. They need to consume 10% of their body weight each day just to survive, making them very vulnerable to marine traffic. Over the years, much research has been done to determine the location of manatee habitats, in an effort to post notifications for marine vessels to slow down, allowing manatees time to get out of harm’s way.
“Manatees don’t have the best hearing and they’re pretty slow moving animals,” said Lippincott. “Unfortunately they don’t always hear a boat coming, and unlike a dolphin who can swim really fast, manatee cruising speed is about 5 miles an hour, so they’re a fairly slow moving animal leaving them very vulnerable to boat strikes. We see them come into our manatee critical care center throughout the year, but we see the number of boat strikes go up starting now throughout the entire summer.”
The reason they’re so vulnerable, said Lippincott, is that their lungs are on their back, so when they’re hit by boats that can break their ribs and puncture their lungs. Often she sees them come in with lung injuries, which is unfortunate since they need their lungs to use the water column and control their buoyancy. Without use of their lungs, Lippincott said, they are unable to dive down into the water and get to needed food.
It is the hope of Zoo Tampa, that if anyone sees a wounded or sick marine animal, they call the FWC immediately, ensuring the animal gets rescued and brought into the hospital.
“We first want to use prevention,” said Lippincott, “so we don’t see any animals come to our hospital. Ideally all manatees would be safe out there and we can share the waterways with them. That way they can enjoy the water and so can we, it’s really about people being aware that manatees live in the shallow areas along the coastline. They really don’t go out into the Gulf, they live out in the rivers where people have their boats. Most people here in Florida really like manatees, they are really good for the environment. The important thing is to recognize different signs in order to make sure manatees are around.”
According to Lippincott, some of the things people can do to prevent having accidents involving manatees is to use polarized sunglasses to help spot them in darker water, to look for the direction they might be moving by the manatee swirl, which happens when they swish in the water.
“They don’t have a dorsal fin that pops up like a dolphin,” said Lippincott. “It can be challenging to recognize that they’re around. If you see a manatee you need to slow down and give way to those animals since this is really their home and we’re just borrowing that for the day to have fun. Being out on the water is amazing, but so is sharing it with the wildlife that lives here. Manatees are really curious, that’s one of the cutest things about them, but we really need people to let them be. We don’t need people to feed them, they can eat fine on their own, and we don’t want people to give them any water.”
Although it’s common for people to give them their hoses to drink from, Lippincott said manatee are very capable of finding fresh water on their own. Allowing the manatee to drink from a hose, she says, can jeopardize their safety by bringing them into marinas where boats are, which often leads to their injury.
A manatee is hit by a boat an average of 20 times in the course of their lifetime, leaving the vast majority with a propeller shaped scar pattern on their back. Lippincott urges everyone to use the rules of the road, likening the concern for manatees in the water to not hitting pedestrians on the road.
Although it’s common practice to have very little interaction with the manatees that are brought to the rescue center, outside of medical help, Lippincott says sometimes it’s inevitable.
“Our goal is to rescue, rehab and release,” said Lippincott. “Our goal is to turn them around as quickly as possible depending on the case — it could be a few months to a couple of years and we do get to know them, even though we don’t try to interact with them because we want them to go back out and be as wild as possible. They are amazing animals, they can go through some terrible injuries and we see their will to live and fight. We are able to save a large majority of them, but unfortunately we can’t save all of them.
“We had a female named Fern, who had a little calf with her named Wilbur from Charlotte Harbor,” she said. “Fern was a boat strike with a lung injury and she was very ill. She didn’t eat for about six weeks, we had to give her fluids and keep her stable. We thought we were going to lose her and she turned around and survived and got released with her calf. Some of the most memorable cases are when you think they’re not going to make it and then they turn around and survive.”