Kit Bradshaw: People still manatees' worst enemies

The small crowd that was gathered at Rio Vista’s boat ramp area on Tuesday cheered as two manatees returned to the wild.

These two manatees, estimated to be about 7 years old, were lucky. About 600 of their fellow creatures weren’t.

That’s the number of manatees lost so far this year due to a variety of reasons, including the long-term cold weather.

It is interesting that this loss of manatees occurred in the same time period that the count of manatees had reach 5,000, which also happened because of the cold weather.

The cold had the manatees gathering in the warm spots — usually near power plants — from the Brevard/Volusia counties area south, on both the east and west coasts of Florida, rather than being more mobile.

So the biologists with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission were able to get a more accurate count of the creatures. This number doesn’t take the manatees off the endangered list, but it was a hopeful sign.

As FWC biologist Dr. Tom Reinert said, the cold is a “natural phenomenon,” one that can’t be avoided. There is nothing that anyone can do about a cold spell that lasted for more than a week, thereby depriving the manatees of the warm waters they need to survive. He said that even the manatees in the Everglades area were affected by the cold, and many of them died.

The cold wave is somewhat of an anomaly in South Florida. We’re used to a couple of days of cold, but not several days and we noticed that many of the plants that usually snap out of it after being cold didn’t come back this time.

But the manatee’s greatest danger, according to Reinert, isn’t the cold, although it was a significant problem this year. It is, and remains, man.

“That’s the reason we have the Manatee Speed Zones,” Reinert said. These zones are in the Intracoastal Waterway as well as in the Loxahatchee River. The hope is that by slowing down the boats they can see and avoid the gentle giants who are in the waters around Jupiter and along the Treasure Coast.

Christie Hudak, another FWC biologist involved with the manatee release Tuesday, said that with boats, half the manatee deaths are from the impact of the boat alone, and the others are from the propellers that cut deeply into the manatee’s body.

“Manatees can survive a propeller wound as long as it doesn’t enter the body cavity,” she said. Also, the slower speeds for boaters can help humans as well, since there are tight turns along the waterways, and boats that are going too fast can’t negotiate these turns.

The other problem, according to biologists, is the monofilament used in fishing lines.

For several years, there has been an effort to have containers where fishermen can place the monofilament they cut after bringing in their catch. The danger from the monofilament, says Hudak, is that it can become entangled around the manatee’s body or fins, and actually cut so deeply into the fin that it can amputate it.

Sometime the fin isn’t completely sliced off by the thin monofilament, but it is partially damaged, causing the animal pain, and even if the manatee is rescued, it can’t be rehabilitated and returned to the wild because of the damage. On occasion, the manatee will ingest the monofilament, and if it lodges in its intestinal track, it will contribute to the animal’s eventual death.

The cold this winter may have meant death to about 600 manatees, but throughout the year, warm and cold weather, people, their boats and their fishing lines still remain the greatest danger to manatees that call this area home.

And people can change the way the drive power boats and dispose of their fishing lines. It is a small thing, but it is a matter of life and death to manatees.