Scientists are trying to understand why thousands of acres of seagrass have been lost after more than 1,000 manatees starved to death in 2021. In a study appearing in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, they identified the culprit as phytoplankton blooms.
In 2021, a die-off of manatees (Trichechus manatus) was blamed on the scarcity of seagrass in Florida’s Indian River Lagoon, which is an estuary extending some 156 miles along the Gulf of Mexico shore. Seagrass is essential for the lumbering marine mammals’ diet. They eat at least 100 pounds of it every day.
