Article Courtesy of: Marine Mammal Commission
The Florida manatee, a subspecies of the West Indian manatee, is a large, slow-moving marine mammal with an elongated, round body and paddle-shaped flippers and tail.
Manatees are herbivores, feeding solely on seagrass, algae and other vegetation in freshwater and estuarine systems in the southeastern United States. Florida manatees can be found as far west as Texas and as far north as Massachusetts during summer months, but during the winter, manatees congregate in Florida, as they require warm-water habitats to survive.
Abundance of the subspecies has increased over the last 30 years, which recently prompted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to downlist the West Indian manatee from endangered to threatened. However, due to their slow speed and relatively high buoyancy, manatees are often struck by vessels, which is the primary cause of human-related deaths of the species.
Additionally, manatees continue to be threatened by loss of warm-water habitat and periodic die-offs from red tides and unusually cold weather events. Florida manatees are managed jointly by both FWS and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC).
Abundance and Trends
The total abundance for the Florida manatee population state-wide was revised in December 2018 and is now estimated at 8,810 manatees. This estimate is based on aerial surveys conducted in 2015-2016 and accounts for possible error in the detection of animals using a statistical model developed by FWC’s Fish and Wildlife Research Institute (FWRI). This estimate is higher than previous minimum counts, which were may have been inaccurate since they were based on synoptic surveys that did not account for animals absent from survey sites or not seen by observers.
The recent higher abundance estimate also suggests that manatee numbers are steadily increasing in Florida, an indication that manatee conservation measures are contributing to recovery of the population.
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