ORLANDO, Fla. — Wildlife authorities fear another deadly winter for Florida’s starving manatees near Orlando and have returned to closely watching for a plunge in temperatures as a signal to resume emergency and unproven feeding procedures.
Last winter, the state and federal wildlife agencies fed 201,727 pounds of lettuce to manatees at the Florida Power & Light Co. electric plant south of Titusville on the shore of the Indian River Lagoon.
For decades, manatees have gathered there by the hundreds to shelter in the warm waters discharged by FPL’s power plant. Few of the marine mammals had arrived there by Tuesday.
“There is a mild cold front coming up Thursday and Friday,” said Ron Mezich of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. “It looks like the forecast through the end of the month is still warm, so we look to be in pretty good shape, and that’s good news for manatees.”
Central Florida manatees are victims of a long feared collapse of the aquatic ecosystem of the Indian River, a thin coastal waterway hugging Volusia, Brevard, Indian River, St. Lucie and Martin counties.
Triggered by sewage and stormwater pollution, the environmental disaster has occurred primarily in Brevard County, where the Indian River has no direct connection with the Atlantic Ocean and is not flushed by tidal waters.
The result has been a takeover of the river by harmful algae and a nearly complete loss of seagrass meadows that manatees depend on for foraging.
Wildlife authorities have learned that manatee deaths can spike abruptly with cold weather arriving in December and can accelerate through January and February.
In 2020, wildlife authorities verified 173 manatee deaths in Brevard, or more than twice as many as the next highest county.
In 2021, Brevard’s toll was 358, or more than three times as many as the next highest county, and the annual statewide count for the year of 1,101 is the highest on record.
In January this year, 82 dead manatees were tallied in Brevard, while the next highest toll was five in each of Indian River, Lee and Miami-Dade counties. Through September, the death count in Brevard has been 336.
Manatee feeding at the FPL plant began in December last year and continued for about 100 days through the end of March.
Mezich said his state wildlife agency will continue to refer to the emergency feeding, though it “worked really well last year,” as a trial response to manatee starvation.
“It is still a trial in our minds,” Mezich said. “There is so much that we don’t know and are learning.”
He said the most important element to determine is whether manatee behavior will change.
“This will remain a temporary process of feeding a wild population and we hope we can end it as soon as possible,” Mezich said.
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