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- During the last 15 years, Florida manatees have began showing in distant elements of Cuba and Mexico, stunning researchers who’ve lengthy believed the animals wouldn’t cross massive our bodies of water to achieve different appropriate habitats.
- The sightings have a number of still-unproven explanations, together with that degraded habitats on the Florida coast are forcing the animals to maneuver elsewhere within the area.
- Others say cellphone know-how is permitting folks to seize manatee conduct that has all the time existed.
All through the winter and spring of 2007, there have been a number of curious sightings of a manatee and her calf in an influence plant consumption canal within the Cuban city of Santa Cruz del Norte, roughly 33 miles (54 kilometers) east of Havana.
Manatees in Cuba aren’t recognized to frequent energy plant canals. That form of conduct is extra attribute of these present in Florida, the place colder temperatures drive the animals to hunt out heat industrial waterways.
Researchers shared the data with the US Geological Survey’s (USGS) Manatee Particular person Photograph-identification System, which has spent over 40 years documenting and registering photographs of manatees within the nation, usually via distinctive physique scars brought on by passing boats. The system at the moment has greater than 3,000 manatees in its database.
This specific manatee had a number of scars over its left flipper and throughout its tail, permitting researchers to substantiate it was the identical manatee noticed in December 1979 in Crystal River, Florida and once more in different rivers in 2005 and 2006.
On the time of the brand new sighting, it appeared like an anomaly. Though some Florida manatees have been recognized to journey lots of of miles alongside the coast to locations like Massachusetts and Texas, that they had by no means been documented touring to Cuba and aren’t recognized to cross massive our bodies of deep water.
“It was not solely the primary report of a Florida manatee resident in Cuba however, to me, it was additionally a revelation that the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and Florida Strait is likely to be bridging or connecting, as an alternative of separating, two populations,” Anmari Alvarez-Alemán, the Caribbean Director for Analysis and Conservation on the Clearwater Marine Aquarium Analysis Institute, informed Mongabay.
As a result of there had been no different sightings, some researchers thought the manatee may need accidently wandered out of its Florida habitat and, by luck, stumbled into one other one. However what if this was an indication of beforehand undiscovered migration patterns? Might manatees be touring to Cuba repeatedly?
Within the years since that sighting, a number of different Florida manatees have appeared in numerous elements of the Caribbean, difficult what researchers know concerning the animal’s conduct and what it would say about altering ecosystems alongside Florida coasts.
Dwindling habitats, and different theories
There are two subspecies of the West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus): the Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris) and Antillean manatee (Trichechus manatus manatus), which is discovered round Caribbean islands, Central America and the northern coasts of South America. Beforehand, researchers believed the sturdy currents of the Florida Strait had been maintaining the 2 subspecies separated.
Manatees reside in heat coastal waters and are available into rivers and bays to drink freshwater. In Florida, well-liked areas just like the 251-kilometer (156-mile) Indian River Lagoon have suffered from habitat degradation, together with algae blooms and a lack of seagrass mattress feeding sights.
Whereas Florida manatee populations have been going up in Florida, final 12 months additionally noticed a traditionally excessive quantity die from boat accidents and hunger, amongst different issues, inflicting officers there to start out a feeding program to complement the seagrass beds.
“There’s lots of proof exhibiting the lower in seagrass density, not solely within the east however within the west coast of Florida,” Alvarez-Alemán stated.
Many manatees have been compelled to journey farther south to seek out vegetation, probably exposing them to temperatures under 68⁰ Fahrenheit (20⁰ Celsius), which might induce lethal “chilly stress.” Touring to Cuba is likely to be their answer to — or a symptom of — that drawback.
One other potential rationalization for the manatee sightings is that the animal has all the time migrated to totally different elements of the Caribbean, however an absence of information-sharing between nations, coupled with insufficient know-how, could have hindered the invention.
At the moment, extra fishermen journey with cell telephones and might seize photographs and movies of the marine life whereas out on the water — one thing that wasn’t as widespread a number of years in the past.
“Earlier than we had cellphone know-how out there, maybe these sightings had been going down in locations the place folks weren’t capable of share data,” Alvarez-Alemán stated. “We have to hold doing analysis in an effort to see if so or if that is one thing going down due to adjustments to the habitat in Florida.”
Extra sightings, extra analysis
After the 2007 sighting, a decade would move earlier than one other Florida manatee was reported in Cuba. Like the primary sighting, it was a mom and a calf with sufficient scarring that researchers may affirm the grownup had come from Florida. Earlier that 12 months, a photograph had been taken of it in Fort Myers. The animal would even be sighted in Cuba in January 2020.
Between November 2020 and February 2021, two Florida manatees appeared not in Cuba however in Cancún— the first-ever sightings in Mexico. Researchers famous that they had been bigger than the native manatees, and had a number of scars on their our bodies which might be rarer in these waters, as boat accidents don’t have an effect on animals in Mexico as usually. They had been additionally extraordinarily pleasant like Florida manatees, coming near people.
This February, one other Florida manatee was noticed by fishermen in Santa Cruz del Norte, Cuba, the place the primary sighting had initially been reported again in 2007. The fishermen had been stunned by how pleasant it was, and gave it freshwater from a hose.
“All it did was drink water from a hose that the fishermen had been giving it,” Aniushka Borroto Bermúdez, a resident of Santa Cruz del Norte, informed Mongabay. “I used to be amazed that such an enormous animal, one which appeared so alone, may work together so nicely with people.”
The rise in sightings has inspired Alvarez-Alemán and different researchers to step up their efforts, finishing up elevated monitoring and genetic testing to find out whether or not the totally different subspecies are interbreeding greater than beforehand thought.
“We’re making an attempt to piece collectively data and procure pictures from areas exterior of Florida to check them to our database,” Kari Rood, of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Fee’s Florida Manatee Program, informed Mongabay.
The jury remains to be out on what Florida manatees are doing in numerous elements of the Caribbean, and what it means about beforehand unknown evolutionary developments. However with these efforts, a solution could come quickly.
“As partnerships develop stronger and we’re capable of get hold of data extra rapidly,” Rood stated, “we are able to higher establish the connections which might be being made.”
Citations:
Alvarez-Alemán, A., Beck, C. A., & Powell, J. A. (2010). First report of a Florida manatee (trichechus manatus latirostris) in Cuba. Aquatic Mammals, 36(2), 148–153. https://doi.org/10.1578/am.36.2.2010.148
Alvarez-Alemán, A., Austin, J. D., Jacoby, C. A., & Frazer, T. Okay. (2018). Cuban connection: Regional position for Florida’s manatees. Frontiers in Marine Science, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2018.00294
Castelblanco-Martínez, D. N., Alvarez-Alemán, A., Torres, R., Teague, A. L., Barton, S. L., Rood, Okay. A., Ramos, E. A., & Mignucci-Giannoni, A. A. (2021). First documentation of long-distance journey by a Florida Manatee to the Mexican Caribbean. Ethology Ecology & Evolution, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/03949370.2021.1967457
Banner picture: An Antillean manatee. (Photograph courtesy of Patrick M. Rose/EFE)
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