Sirenews (ISSN 1017-3439) appears twice a year

in April and October and is edited by Daryl P. Domning,

Department of Anatomy, Howard University, Washington, D.C. 20059 USA

(fax: 1-202-265-7055). It is supported by the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission

and Sea World, Inc.

NUMBER 28 OCTOBER 1997

IN THIS ISSUE: - SIRENIANS PROLIFERATING IN CYBERSPACE (p. 4)

- MANATEE TWINS CONCEIVED IN CAPTIVITY IN

BRAZIL (p. 8)

- LEGAL FIREWORKS OVER CASINO CRUISES AT CRYSTAL

RIVER (p. 8)

MANATEES AND THE FUTURE OF ELECTRIC UTILITIES DEREGULATION

IN FLORIDA

This article deals with some very serious potential problems that Florida manatees may face as a result of the deregulation of the electric utility industry. Due to the complexity of the deregulation issue and the space available in this newsletter, I will confine most of my thoughts to its potential effects on manatees and Florida's environment rather than discussing the details of deregulation's pros and cons for the utility customer.

Background and History. Industrial warm-water outfalls, such as power plant effluents, have played a pivotal role in allowing the manatee population in Florida to experience partial recovery. Their combined contribution may be second only to the cessation of hunting through the implementation of important laws to protect manatees. The relative distribution of these warm-water sources throughout Florida's coastal habitat has allowed manatees to extend their winter range and cushioned what would have been much greater losses during times of extreme cold. After several substantial and near-catastrophic losses of manatees due to cold weather at some of these facilities, and through years of close cooperation among the utility companies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), it deceptively
appeared we were close to ensuring that we could provide manatees with secure warm-water sources for many years to come.

For example, during the early 1980's the Florida Power and Light Company (FPL) rerouted some of the discharge from newer units to allow the existing warm-water discharge to remain in a safer and more reliable place for manatees. A further example involved the re-powering of the old FPL Fort Lauderdale Inland Power Plant. This was an existing site on which manatees had already become dependent. Through re-powering at an existing site a win/win/win scenario was created whereby FPL saved money, the adverse environmental impacts were minimized, and the site's reliability for manatees was improved through several physical modifications to the discharge area. This solution seemed to be an answer to providing new electric generation capacity when the various power plants in Florida outlived their planned operational cycles. This was especially important since virtually everyone involved with power plant siting agreed that we should not create new thermal discharges.

Only a few years later, however, a different and even more challenging problem arose, which in hindsight may have been a harbinger of more desperate times for manatees in Florida's future. It involved the FPL Ft. Myers (Tice) power plant. A contingent of researchers was converging on the power plant discharge to set up a large-scale capture operation to catch and fit manatees with electronic tags/transmitters. Just as we had hoped, there was a really major cold front barreling down on us that should have ensured that we would have a lot of manatees to choose from. Something, however, was very wrong. Upon our arrival we discovered that there was no warm water being discharged. Apparently the executives at FPL had decided (without consultation with their own environmental staff) that since they could buy power cheaper from Georgia, they would not run the Tice power plant. Needless to say we did what was necessary to avert what would have been a major catastrophe by getting Governor Graham to intervene with the President of FPL, who agreed to run the plant temporarily even though it would be more expensive to operate the plant than to purchase more power. Ultimately, FPL agreed to install warm-water wells at the Tice discharge that would be turned on in future winters when the discharge temperature dropped below 20 degrees Celsius.

Perhaps the single most important element in our quest to protect manatees from catastrophic losses at warm-water sites (on which they now had become thoroughly dependent during the winter) was requiring, as a condition for the National Pollution Discharge Permits (NPDES), the adoption of Manatee Protection Plans which maximized the reliability of the heated discharge from each utility that was already attracting manatees. At the same time, efforts have also continued to eliminate some thermal discharges that were not reliable and were putting manatees at greater risk of exposure during major cold fronts or simply during non-operation of the facility.

Deregulation Concerns. Having laid the above foundation I will finally get to the point of this article - which is that Florida will soon be facing deregulation of the retail electric power utility industry. Although this is probably still several years away, deregulation's potential adverse consequences for manatees and Florida's environment are monumental. Federal laws have already been passed which facilitate wholesale power deregulation, and several other states, such as California, Texas, Oklahoma, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and others, have already embarked upon retail wheeling. The essential premise is that through deregulation, competition will lower utility rates. The most analogous situation is what happened in the telephone industry. Unfortunately, this is expected to be much more complicated and have a more uncertain outcome.

For starters, even if electric rates eventually decline for most customers (which is in serious doubt), the reliability of service to customers is going to be threatened, especially when you take into account the uncertainties of who will be responsible for maintaining the transmission networks and at what cost. The real push behind the deregulation effort is coming from the larger power customers such as factories and businesses. At a minimum, deregulation and therefore competition will mean that the power companies will seek to operate only those facilities producing the cheapest power, which will lead to unpredictable and unreliable warm-water discharges. Although a particular plant may be needed one week, it may be cheaper to buy electricity from another state the next week. Since coal and orimulsion are some of the cheapest fuels for producing power, and since protecting the environment costs money and higher costs would mean less revenue, the environmental safeguards may be the first things to go. It is imperative that the utilities which have benefited financially all these years from discharging heated waters, upon which manatees have now become dependent, be held to providing safe alternatives for manatees should they choose to abandon or diminish the reliability of these warm-water sites for purely economical reasons.

If we are going to find reasonable solutions to promoting competition and protecting the environment, we will have to start working as soon as possible with the existing utilities to ensure that environmental costs and manatee protection costs are factored into any "stranded cost projections". Stranded costs are essentially the difference between the actual cost of a long-term asset, such as a power plant, and the current market value of that asset. Just as we expect that the existing utilities will seek to recover these uneconomic costs from customers during a transition from a regulated to a competitive process, we must also work to ensure that the environmental safeguards and obligations for manatee protection are also factored into those calculations.

Thanks to use of the existing "once through" cooling systems (which produce the warm-water discharges), the historical savings to the utilities have been enormous. Yet because the potential for future adverse impacts to manatees from unreliable effluents is so great, it will be necessary to consider a variety of alternatives for the future. With hundreds of manatees now dependent upon the several existing warm-water outfalls, we must have sufficient contingency plans for the future. One such alternative may involve setting up a network of smaller but more numerous warm-water areas for manatees within a larger network of refuges and preserves located up and down the coasts and within important rivers. Geothermal sources could be considered, along with deeper water sinks and/or thermal-assisted applications such as solar power during periods of most severe cold. In the meantime it will be important to ensure that the utilities meet their respective obligations to protect the manatees that they, for economic reasons, conditioned to become dependent upon these warmer waters.

The Uncertain Future Can Still Be Shaped. - With all of the uncertainties regarding the future of deregulation and its potential effects on Florida's environment and manatees in particular, it will be very important to gather the information necessary for appropriate action. Especially in Florida (where the existing utility companies are still reluctant to embrace open competition), there is still time to learn from other states and adequately plan for an orderly transition. The FWS and DEP must, however, immediately step up their efforts to ensure the future integrity of the existing important warm-water refugia until appropriate long-term alternatives can be found, if and when they are needed. More specifically, future approvals for deregulation in Florida should be conditioned upon the FWS and EPA preparing a complete Environmental Impact Statement which can be used to assess and facilitate needed environmental safeguards. Above all, it is essential that, once identified, the needed manatee protection and other environmental safeguards are incorporated into any future plans for deregulation in Florida. Please let the leaders at FWS, EPA, and DEP know that you won't stand for manatees being left out in the cold while utility providers fight over the future of retail electricity distribution in Florida. - Patrick M. Rose (Save the Manatee Club)

NEW MANATEE NEWSLETTER

Volume 1, Issue 1 of Manatee News Quarterly (for January-March 1997) appeared in June 1997 with 12 pages of detailed news coverage concerning the State of Florida's research and conservation efforts on behalf of Florida manatees. Issue 2 (for April-June 1997), also with 12 pages, appeared in September. Published in Tallahassee by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP), this new periodical is the direct continuation of the former "MTAC Update" series previously produced by the Department as internal documents mainly for the use of members of its Manatee Technical Advisory Council.

For those wishing to follow the numerous and fast-changing developments relating to Florida manatees in much greater detail than Sirenews provides, this official FDEP newsletter is an ideal complement to the more popularly-oriented and independent voice of the Save the Manatee Club Newsletter. The coverage of State agencies' manatee activities in Manatee News Quarterly and its predecessor series has been sufficiently exhaustive that it may justly be viewed as the definitive "newsletter of record" on this topic.

To receive copies of Manatee News Quarterly, and/or notices of MTAC meetings (which are held in various locations in Florida and are open to the public), send your request in writing to the FDEP Bureau of Protected Species Management, Mail Station 245, 3900 Commonwealth Boulevard, Tallahassee, Florida 32399-3000; fax: (850) 922-4338.

READ SIRENEWS ON THE INTERNET

Dan Odell is continuing to post the text of Sirenews on the Society for Marine Mammalogy's web site, <http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~smm/>. These posted versions of the newsletter do not include the illustrative material or most abstracts that appear in the hard-copy editions, since these items are printed from camera-ready copy rather than digitized. If you nonetheless find that the Internet versions are adequate for your needs and you no longer wish to receive the hard copies, please notify me so that I can delete you from the mailing list and save on printing and postage. - DPD

NEW DUGONG WEBSITE

I am maintaining a private, rather extensive website (English and German) about the dugong under the address <http://home.t-online.de/home/rothauscher/dugong.htm> with over 1,500 worldwide visitors in this year. The aims are to: 1) supply a list of (as far as possible) all dugong links in the Web; 2) include an interactive image map of the Indian Ocean with hypertext links to information about the dugong populations in the various areas; 3) collect reports about dugong sightings, which are then included in the page information.

I need more contributions. I invite you to have a look at my pages, and I would be pleased to receive comments. - Hans Rothauscher (Süderende 23, 21782 Bülkau, Germany; tel.: (049)-04754/511; fax: (049)-02561/91316 35754 (until end of 1997); e-mail: <Rothauscher@T-online.de>

PICK A MANATEE'S BRAIN ON THE INTERNET

Wally Welker and his colleagues Roger Reep and John Johnson have for years been sectioning, staining, and studying the brains of manatees and other animals, and are now making some of the resulting images available on-line. If you have an interest in comparative neuroanatomy, or would just like to see what a manatee's brain looks like, inside and out, then visit their new website at <http://www.neurophys.wisc.edu/Manatee/>. A related site devoted to their large collection of other mammalian brains is <http://www.neurophys.wisc.edu/Brain/>.

YET MORE MANATEE STUFF ON THE INTERNET

The website of the Florida Marine Research Institute, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, now carries monthly summary tables and graphs of data on Florida manatee mortality (through June 1997, as of 24 Oct. 1997). Access it at: <http://www.fmri. usf.edu>.

The "Regional Management Plan for the West Indian Manatee, Trichechus manatus" (Caribbean Environment Programme Technical Report No. 35, 1995), advertised in our last issue as available from the CEP office in Kingston, Jamaica, is also available at the CEP website: <http://www.unep.mx/cepnews/ing/ct35indx.htm>.

Other Internet addresses relating to manatees are the following (quoted here from Manatee News Quarterly):

Caribbean Stranding Network: <http://netdial.caribe.net/~mignucci/>

Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Bureau of Protected Species

Management: <http://www.dep.state.fl.us/psm/>

Save the Manatee Club: <http://www.objectlinks.com/manatee>

Sea World of Florida: <http://www.bev.net/education/

seaworld/teachersguides.html>

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: <http://bluegoose.arw.r9.fws.gov/

nwrsfiles/Wildlifemgmt/SpeciesAccounts/Mammals/Flmanatee/

FlmanateeTableofContents.html>

SEA PIGS LEADING SEA COWS IN INDOPACIFIC POLL

In Sirenews No. 27 I requested readers to forward vernacular names used by local people for the dugong. I referred to the discussion raised during 1991 by Prof. Paul Anderson on sirenian vernacular names. In response to my request, I received a large number of vernacular names from all over the region, and I present the results below.

Summary of vernacular names for the dugong

REGION CONTACT PERSON LANGUAGE NAME MEANING

Sri Lanka Anderson Tamil kadalpani sea pig

Sinhalese cudalpani sea pig

Indonesia Persoon Siberut sakoko ka sea pig

Siberut koat

Andaman/ Das Andaman pani suar sea pig

Nicobar Is. suar machhi pigfish

India/ Das Tamil kadal pasu sea cow

Tamilnadu

Mozambique De Boer ? n'pfuwomati sea hippo

Thailand Pitaksinthorn Thai mu-nam water pig

mu-dut digging pig

Indonesia Ismu Sutanto Malay babi laout sea pig

putri duyung mermaid

Although this list is certainly not extensive, it shows that the vernacular name of sea pig, water pig, or digging pig is common in the Asian region, with the exception of Tamilnadu, where the word kadal pasu (sea cow) is used. Dr. Das reported that here also, people eat dugong meat, irrespective of religion, maybe because of the low economic condition. He also informed me that even if the majority of the coastal population are Hindus, for whom the cow is a sacred animal, they do not mind eating or selling the meat of the sea cow. Also, local people from the Andamans apparently had no religious taboos preventing them from eating dugong meat.

From information I received from Mr. Pitaksinthorn in Thailand and from Mr. De Boer in Mozambique, also no religious taboos were evident. It is interesting to note that local Thai fishermen in east Thailand call the dugong digging pig, while in the south it is called water pig. In Africa the association with the hippo is evident. Also in South Africa, in Afrikaans the dugong is called Nijlpaard, a Dutch word for hippo. It seems that in Africa the dugong is not directly associated with a pig, but rather with a hippo.

From my own experience I learned that the dominant local name of sea pig does not prevent Muslim people in Indonesia from eating dugong meat. In the Moluccas I learned that Chinese often buy (accidentally-)captured dugongs, to release them. I was told that this is a Buddhist custom, which is certainly not related to the vernacular name, but is related to the reincarnation of ancestral spirits. Surprisingly, coastal villagers in Sumatra made mention of the "strand pig," which turned out to be groups of bearded pigs, Sus barbatus oi, foraging on tidal flats. Prof. Anderson informed me that he is in full agreement with pursuing the "sea pig" issue, although he does not feel at ease with "sea sows" or "sea piglets."

From his research, however, he confirms the bottom-rooting, semi-omnivorous niche of the dugong. Dugongs in his North Cove study area at Shark Bay fed in a "flukes up" posture with the body vertical and the flukes extending above the surface. He reported fresh craters in a dense meadow of Halodule uninervis. I have found craters of similar size in Halodule meadows of the Lease Islands, but did not catch the dugongs "red-handed."

In Sirenews No. 27, I memtioned as the main argument for a possible change in vernacular name the positive spinoff for conservation in regions where "pig meat" is a religious taboo. As from the anecdotal information I have gathered, there seems to be no direct relationship between the vernacular name and religious taboos for eating dugong meat, I conclude that there is no strong argument yet for a change in vernacular name. Of course I remain interested in further updates of vernacular names and religious taboos with reference to the eating of dugong meat. I will keep you informed on new developments! - Hans de Iongh (Roghorst 343, 6708 UX Wageningen, The Netherlands; e-mail: Iongh@RULCML.LEIDENUNIV.NL)

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The South African confusion between the hippopotamus and the dugong is a long-standing one. Afrikaans also uses the name seekoei for the hippo, and Beeckman in 1812 gave a description of "an amphibious creature, called by them manitee, or a sea-cow," encountered at the Cape of Good Hope, which was obviously a hippopotamus. This usage probably explains why P. L. S. Müller attributed to the dugong a range including the Cape of Good Hope when he named the species in 1776. Perhaps one of our South African correspondents with an antiquarian bent can disentangle the history of these names in their region.

Tony Preen, in his 1989 monograph on dugongs in Arabian waters (MEPA Coastal & Marine Management Series Report No. 10, vol. 1, pp. 52, 99, 115), reports that Sunni Muslims in Arabia are allowed to eat dugong meat, but that it is apparently prohibited for Shia Muslims. However, these customs seem to vary locally among different communities of fishermen, and may not be recognized or observed uniformly by all Sunnis or Shiites. We would welcome comments on this subject from our Muslim correspondents in various parts of the world.]

REQUEST FOR RESEARCH PROPOSALS

The Center for Field Research invites proposals for 1998-99 field grants funded by its affiliate Earthwatch. Earthwatch is an international, non-profit organization dedicated to sponsoring field research and promoting public education in the sciences and humanities. Past projects have been fielded in, but are not limited to, the following disciplines: animal behavior, biodiversity, ecology, ornithology, endangered species, entomology, marine mammalogy, ichthyology, herpetology, marine ecology, and resource and wildlife management. Interdisciplinary projects and multinational collaboration are especially encouraged. Information can be found at <http://www.earthwatch. org/cfr/cfr.html>, or you can contact The Center for Field Research, 680 Mt. Auburn St., Watertown, MA 02272 USA; tel.: (617) 926-8200, fax: (617) 926-8532, e-mail: <cfr@earthwatch.org>

LATIN AMERICAN MARINE MAMMAL CONGRESS

The 8th Working Meeting of Specialists in Aquatic Mammals and the 2nd Congress of the Latin American Society of Specialists in Aquatic Mammals (SOLAMAC) will be held in Olinda, Pernambuco, Brazil, 25-29 October 1998. For information and registration, contact: Secretaria da Comissa~o Organizadora da 8a RT, C.P. no. 01, Ilha de Itamaracá - PE, CEP 53900-000, Brazil (tel. ++55 (081) 544-1056/544-1731; fax: ++55 (081) 544-1835; e-mail: rplima@elogica.com.br

LOCAL NEWS

AUSTRALIA

Declaration of "Dugong Protection Areas" in the Southern Great Barrier Reef and Hervey Bay. - Readers of Sirenews will be aware of the plans to declare "Dugong Protection Areas in the Southern Great Barrier Reef" in response to the serious decline in dugong numbers along a 2000-km stretch of the east coast of Queensland.

In August 1997, the Great Barrier Reef Ministerial Council (which is composed of the national and Queensland [state] Ministers of the Environment, Primary Industries and Tourism) finalized the establishment of a chain of dugong sanctuaries in the region of concern.

The Ministerial Council established a two-tiered system of Dugong Protection Areas (DPA's). In the Great Barrier Reef Region gill-netting is banned in six DPA(Zone A)'s with a total area of 2395 km². These DPA's support an estimated 55% of the dugongs in the Southern Great Barrier Reef region. A further 13% of the dugongs in the region occur in eight DPA(Zone B)'s with a total area of 2235 km². Gill-netting practices have been modified in the DPA B's with a view to reducing dugong mortality.

Gill-netting practices have also been modified throughout Hervey Bay, an important dugong habitat south of the Great Barrier Reef.

The Ministerial Council also agreed that appropriate compensation will be paid to fishers affected by the establishment of Zone A DPA's.

These initiatives have not received wide support. Conservationists regard the closures as inadequate. They believe that the DPA B's should also be closed to gill-netting and that gill-netting should also be banned in the tidal reaches of the creeks which flow into the DPA's. The fishers are also upset by the impact of the closure.

I would have liked the measures to be more extensive and to include additional measures such as a seasonal closure in August-October (when most dugong carcasses are recovered). However, I regard these initiatives as a significant first step. - Helene Marsh

BELIZE

More Manatee Poaching. - Evidence of clandestine manatee butchering in Belize has repeatedly surfaced in recent years, as reported in Sirenews Nos. 24 and 27. The latest report comes from Oscar Salazar, an Environmental Field Educator at The Belize Zoo. On 17 April 1997, together with Peace Corps volunteer Larry Saulnier, he discovered yet another heap of manatee bones, this one near the village of Punta Negra in southern Belize.

Mr. Salazar plans to incorporate the story of this sad discovery into his regular slide-show presentations on manatee conservation, which are given to schoolchildren and teachers in the nearby communities. Though such local educational efforts are desirable and necessary, however, the more urgent need would seem to be for increased law enforcement - especially in view of evidence (previously reported here) that the poachers are coming from outside Belize, possibly from Guatemala. We impatiently await some news of arrests and stiff penalties in these cases. - DPD

BRAZIL

Captive Manatee Births. - Newton Banks reports the following breeding successes with T. manatus held at the Manatee Conservation and Handling Center, Itamaracá, Pernambuco:

On 19 December 1996, a 36-year-old female gave birth to her first-born, a male 1.13 m in length and 33 kg in weight. This is said to be the first manatee known to have been conceived in captivity in South America.

On 10 April 1997, another female gave birth to twin female calves, 91 and 101 cm long and 16 and 18 kg in weight, respectively. This is the first case of manatee twins conceived in captivity.

COSTA RICA

New Manatee Conservation Project. - For over a year, Ignacio Jiménez Pérez has been carrying on manatee research in Costa Rica. The following abstract is adapted from a progress report he prepared in June 1997.

"Papers written up to 1995 on manatees in Costa Rica, based on short-term surveys in the country, report a very small and endangered population. Small-scale distribution, conservation status, and threats are poorly known. In June 1996 I started field research for a MSc thesis on manatee conservation in northeastern Costa Rica. The objectives are to assess: 1) manatee distribution, 2) presence of suitable habitat, and 3) principal threats. I also designed management and educational activities as part of an overall manatee conservation project for Costa Rica.

"Activities carri