NUMBER 43 APRIL 2005
IN THIS
ISSUE: -
MANATEE
RECOVERY (p. 4)
- DUGONG RESEARCH IN
EDITORIAL:
EARTH TO
After
many months of postponing consideration of a petition to downlist Florida
manatees from “Endangered” to “Threatened” status under Florida law, the
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWCC) has just taken a step
toward such action (see story in this issue). Although the Commission’s vote at
its April meeting did not directly affect manatees, it preserved the
objectionable regulatory language according to which “Threatened” in
Since
we already editorialized at length on this topic in Sirenews Nos. 38 (October 2002) and 42 (October 2004), little needs
to be added at this time. Even though federal protection for manatees remains
in place (for now; but see news items below), and any move by the state to
actually downlist manatees is still several months and several
procedural steps away, it is nonetheless disturbing that the FWCC continues to
ignore the torrent of scientific criticism provoked by its idiosyncratic
twisting of well-established, globally-accepted terminology.
On its
website, the FWCC defends its language on the grounds that “these names are
embedded in numerous
Begging
your pardon, but in the present political climate, this seems just a bit …
well, naïve. We have legions of lawyers and lawmakers who are paid to get the
language in our laws right; haggling endlessly over words is their bread and
butter. Species-specific management plans? These are products of lengthy
negotiation among numerous stakeholders, and as such are not immune to
political influence. Even when a sound management plan exists, it takes more
than a paper plan to ensure protection: the plan has to be backed by political
support and political will, or it will not be implemented – as countless
unenforced environmental laws in developing and developed countries bear
witness. Names and labels are critical in galvanizing (or undermining)
political support, and when you see someone trying to rewrite the dictionary in
the midst of a political debate, you know it’s not an accident.
In the
end, this is far from being just a harmless quibble over words. The
Those opponents understand very well
the significance of a designation like “Endangered”, and they want a
public-relations label that evokes less urgency, no matter what the actual data
show. Although they have signaled that they seek only to block future
protection measures and not overturn existing ones, don’t bet they won’t change
their minds once the re-labeling is done and the State of
The threat level has just gone
up. -
DPD
SIRENIA SPECIALIST GROUP MEMBERSHIP
Based on
discussions at the last meeting of the SSG in December 2004, a new membership
list has been developed:
Executive Members: John Reynolds (co-chair), Buddy Powell
(co-chair), Helene Marsh, Toshio Kasuya, Tony Mignucci, Ester Quintana, Miriam
Marmontel, Vera da Silva, Akoi Kouadio, P.K. Ofori-Danson, Daryl Domning, Dan
Odell (12)
Regular Members: Benjamin Morales-Vela, Donna Kwan, Fernando
Weber Rosas, Ivan Lawler, Janet Lanyon, Jorge Calvimontes, Judith Vallee, Lem
Aragones, Lynn Lefebvre, Tom O'Shea, V.G. Cockcroft, Hans de Iongh, Chip
Deutsch, Ron Mezich, Nicole Adimey, Jim Valade, Nicole Auil, Caryn
Self-Sullivan, Bob Bonde, Rogelio Diaz-Fernandez (20)
Please
review the list and send any additions or recommendations to: Cynthia R. Taylor,
Conservation Biologist, Wildlife Trust, 15 Paradise Plaza #369, Sarasota,
Florida 34239-6905 USA; tel.: 941-232-4587 (cell), e-mail: <taylor@wildlifetrust.org>; website:
<www.wildlifetrust.org>
COURSE ON GIS/REMOTE SENSING
FOR COASTAL AND MARINE SCIENTISTS
Over the course of the last decade, marine and
coastal applications of GIS and remote sensing have gained wide acceptance in
the scientific and GIS communities. In recognition of this growing trend, the
GIS certificate program at
Previous
offerings of this class have been very successful for both student and
instructor alike and we are proud to offer it to the community for the fourth
time.
The
course is entitled: GIS and Remote Sensing Applications for Coastal and Marine
Scientists, Geog 9023, Schedule No. 95083, held 14-18 June at
Days
1 & 2: Introduction to GIS. This course is an introduction to the concepts
and uses of GIS as it relates to coastal and marine science. Lecture topics
include history of GIS, GIS data structures and sources of data, GIS tools,
vendors and software, applications, and resources. Exercises include spatial
data display and query, map generation, and simple spatial analysis using
ArcGIS software. Instructor: Ellen Hines
teaches GIS at
Days
3 & 4: Remote Sensing Course. This course is an introduction to the
physical principles of electromagnetic radiation through earth's atmosphere and
remote sensing sensors relevant for coastal and marine studies. The course is designed for beginning level
users. Instructor: Toby
Day
5: Hands on! Bring your own field data, or we can supply you with material to
work with.
Cost
for the 5 days of instruction is US$1095.00. This course is offered through the
SFSU GIS Certificate Program (http://gis.sfsu.edu/cert)
in the
For
further information, please contact Ellen Hines (ehines@sfsu.edu; tel. 1-415-405-0921)
or Barry Nickel (bnickel@sfsu.edu; tel. 1-415-338-3566).
LOCAL NEWS
Another Amazonian Manatee Captive Birth.
– On 6 April 2005, another female
manatee gave birth to the fifth Amazonian
manatee conceived and born in captivity at the Aquatic Mammal Laboratory of
INPA in
(NOTE:
For detailed coverage of manatee matters in
After conducting a final public hearing on the
proposal, during the first day of their two-day meeting in
(The Commission is a five-member
board appointed by the governor to oversee hunting, fishing and wildlife
protection.)
The Commissioners also voted to lift the present moratorium
on considering classification of listed species; but their decision does not
immediately affect the listing status of any of the 118 animal species
classified as Endangered, Threatened, or Species of Special Concern in the
state list – including manatees, for which a biological status review by the
state has not yet been completed.
According to FWCC endangered species
coordinator Dan Sullivan, a key strength of the proposed process is how
appropriate recovery actions will be identified and put in place. Whenever the
agency considers listing, reclassifying or delisting a species, he said, FWCC
staff will develop a management plan tailored to that individual species’
needs. The plan will outline species-specific protections, replacing
less-effective blanket prohibitions of the past, which were tied to categories
rather than species’ individual needs. The new updates also will strengthen the
process by involving a biological review panel throughout the evaluation
process and requiring an additional peer review of that panel’s assessment.
Details on the proposed updates are available at <MyFWC.com/imperiledspecies>.
But critics are not convinced.
As reported at length in Sirenews No. 38 (October 2002),
Using one of the state’s listing/delisting criteria,
a species would have to undergo or be at risk of undergoing an 80% decline in
its population in order to be listed as “Endangered”. Listed species that have
undergone precipitous declines historically, but are not continuing to decline
at an 80% rate, could be downlisted despite the fact that their numbers are
only a small fraction of their original populations. An 80% decline could
easily cause a species to go extinct before conservation measures could be
implemented. Population biologists point out that these criteria are
particularly inappropriate for large, long-lived marine animals like manatees
and sea turtles.
Because
of this FWCC action, Florida’s endangered species, such as manatees, panthers,
and sea turtles, could potentially be reclassified as “Threatened” – or receive
an even lower classification – all because of this misalignment of category
names and definitions. Now that the rule amendments have been adopted, FWCC
plans to move forward with the completion of its manatee biological status
review precipitated in 2001 by a petition from an angler’s lobby group, the
Coastal Conservation Association.
Patrick
Rose, a former state wildlife official and now Director of Government Relations
for the Save the Manatee Club, commented that “State decision-makers are
listening to special interests like never before. They have already downlisted
the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker to a ‘Species of Special Concern’. It
will only be a matter of time before the state receives more petitions from
special interest groups to downlist other species whose habitat requirements
get in the way of developers’ profit-making.
Sales prices for individual boat slips built over submerged lands held
in public trust have soared to over US$1 million in some cases. With so much
money to be made at the public’s expense, it’s no wonder that the [state
regulatory] agencies are being pressured by the legislature to open the
floodgates of development without adequate checks and balances to protect the
environment and especially our imperiled species.”
Fortunately,
manatees in
Also
less than encouraging are two personnel matters on the federal level. U.S.
Interior Secretary Gale Norton has named as acting director of FWS one Matthew
J. Hogan, a former chief lobbyist for the Safari Club International – an
organization that encourages the hunting of big game, including endangered
species, as well as promoting wildlife conservation.
FWS,
in turn, has expanded the interagency Manatee Recovery Team from its
traditional makeup of some 15-20 biologists and wildlife managers, inflating it
to a membership of 120 that for the first time includes representatives of the
boating, dock-building, and development industries in addition to manatee
experts. The Recovery Team is charged with making recommendations on manatee
management and listing to Secretary Norton.
Given
all these developments, especially in the context of the June deadline for
submissions to FWS’s manatee status review, there is growing concern among
manatee defenders.
“People
are going to think that any species undergoing a downward category change is on
the road to recovery – purely because the FWCC is obstinately refusing to align
the IUCN categories and names for these categories with their own
listing/delisting guidelines,” said biologist Patti Thompson, the Save the
Manatee Club’s Director of Science and Conservation. “No matter what happens on
the state level, manatees will still be listed as endangered by the federal
government. Unfortunately, special interests will be pushing for species’
reclassifications as a way to rid themselves of what they believe to be
excessive regulations,” said Thompson.
Earlier,
a state review of 24 listed species found that a majority of the species could
be downlisted or even delisted when the state’s flawed criteria were applied.
It is possible that the
“Manatees
and, in fact, all of the state’s wildlife will continue to face mounting
pressures from
Fish and Wildlife Service Announces
5-year Status Review for the
According to Dave Hankla, the Service's field supervisor
for its North Florida Ecological Services Office in
"There has been a tremendous amount of effort put
into manatee conservation and research over the last several years,"
Hankla said, "and this is an opportunity for our biologists and
conservation managers to conduct a comprehensive review of the latest and best
scientific and commercial data available."
In the case of the
1) species biology, such as popu-lation trends,
distribution, demographics and genetics;
2) habitat conditions such as amount,
distribution and suitability;
3) conservation measures which have been
implemented that benefit the species;
4) threat status and trends; and
5) other new
information, data or corrections, such as improved analytical methods,
nomenclatural changes, or identification of errors in the information contained
in the original listing.
To be of greatest use to Service biologists conducting
the review, any new information submitted should be supported by documentation
such as maps, bibliographic references, methods used to gather the data, and/or
copies of any pertinent publications, reports or letters from knowledgeable
sources.
Five-year reviews allow the Service staff to determine if
sufficient information is available to warrant a recommendation to reclassify a
species or even take it off the ESA list altogether. According to Hankla, any recommendation to
change the manatee's status would only be considered if substantiated by the
data and would not be made without due consideration.
"If, after reviewing all the information, we
determine nothing has changed, the manatee's status will remain
Federally-listed as endangered," Hankla said. "However, if the data
substantiates that a reclassification or de-listing is warranted, we could
recommend either. Any such decision to recommend reclassification or de-listing
would require a separate rulemaking process which would include ample
opportunity for public review and comment."
The Federal
Register notice announcing this solicitation of new information and data is
available online at <northflorida.fws.gov>
or may be requested by e-mail to <manatee@fws.gov>,
by fax at 904-232-2404, by mail at U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Attn:
Manatee Five-year Review, 6620 Southpoint Drive, Suite 310, Jacksonville, FL
32216-0958, or by telephone at 904-232-2580.
New information and comments may be mailed, hand-delivered,
faxed, or submitted electronically. Please mail or deliver comments to the
address or fax number listed above. Comments submitted electronically should be
embedded in the body of the e-mail message itself or attached (please see
Notice for details), and should not use special characters or encryption. Please
include "Attn: Manatee 5-year Review" in your subject line, and your
full name, return address, and, if appropriate, your company, government
agency, or organization you represent, in your e-mail message. Comments submitted to <manatee@fws.gov> will receive an
automated response confirming receipt of your message.
In order for biologists and conservation managers to have
sufficient time to consider any new information, the information and any
supporting data or documents must be received by the Service no later than 13 June
2005. -
(FWS press release)
New
Manatee Biological Population Assessment Released. – [ED. NOTE: The following are excerpts from the
summary of the latest annual report from the Manatee Population Status Working
Group (MPSWG), an advisory body to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS)
composed of scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, Marine Mammal
Commission, USFWS, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Montana
State University, Coastal Conservation Association, Save the Manatee Club, and
Wildlife Trust. The MPSWG is the most authoritative source there is on the
status of the
… The
Northwest and
The status and dynamics of the
Atlantic subpopulation are less clear than the Northwest or
The Southwest subpopulation appears
to be the most vulnerable to decline.
Estimates of adult survival are low and the growth rate estimates
indicate the subpopulation appears to be declining. For non-adults, most mortality is natural.
For adults, watercraft mortality is the highest ranked cause of death. The Southwest subpopulation is unique in that
it faces major, periodic mortality events due to red tide. Red tide is responsible for nearly one-fourth
of known-cause mortality across ages.
Based on the available data, it appears that if this subpopulation is to
stabilize or indeed increase in size, it cannot sustain any further increases
in mortality. Two factors make it
difficult to assess some aspects of the status of the Southwest subpopulation. First, the time series of data is shortest
for this subpopulation, thus the survival and reproductive estimates are less
precise than for the other subpopulations.
Second, the subpopulation is found in diverse habitats from
State-wide patterns concerning
mortality risk can be discerned by comparing the relative causes of death in
the four subpopulations. For adults in
each subpopulation the most prominent source of mortality is watercraft
collision. The second ranked cause of
death varies by subpopulation. In the
Northwest it is cold stress; in the Upper St. Johns River it is crushing by
gates or locks; in the
The Southwest and
The MPSWG evaluated available
manatee data and analyses to determine whether they were adequate to assess
recovery under the existing demographic recovery criteria as provided in the
Are Thirsty Cities Thwarting Manatee Recovery Efforts?
- The Florida manatee's prospects
for survival may depend less on boaters -- who for decades have been scorned
for mauling the animals with propellers and boat hulls -- and more on the
unquenchable thirst of booming cities like Orlando, Tampa and Fort Myers, the
federal official overseeing recovery efforts said yesterday.
That surprising assessment by Dave Hankla, field
supervisor of the Fish and Wildlife Service's North Florida Ecological Services
Office, sets the stage for what promises to be a robust debate over the
service's five-year status review for one of
Other findings expected from the review are that
manatees would not survive without hot water discharges from power plants, and
that recurring red tides along the
Freshwater springs, extending from the Floridan
aquifer in the east-central part of the state, are essential to manatees during
the winter, where they congregate by the hundreds in warmer, shallow inlets to
stave off hypothermia. Without the warmer water, the animals would experience
mass die-offs, federal officials say.
"The more water you take out, the less chance
these natural springs have of replenishing themselves. And if the warm water
isn't there, there's a good chance these animals will freeze to death,"
Hankla said in a telephone interview.
Such is the complex balance between human and wildlife
needs in
In the past month alone, two federal courts have ruled
FWS failed to adequately protect the endangered
Some observers, like Pat Rose of the nonprofit Save
the Manatee Club, believe the manatee will be the next high-profile
Hankla denied such claims, noting that FWS is meeting
an obligation it made in 2001 when it last revised the manatee's recovery plan.
"There's really nothing behind this," he said. "We're doing it
to reel in all the statistics and see where things stand."
Depending upon who is doing the counting, the
manatee's status varies wildly -- from not meeting FWS recovery goals to far
surpassing
Ted Forsgren, director of the Coastal Conservation
Association of Florida, which represents 10,000 saltwater anglers, said his
members see more manatees in
Slow-speed boating zones have been adopted across a
quarter million acres of peninsular
As a member of a federal advisory committee for
manatee recovery, Forsgren is pressing FWS to revise its approach to
determining the species' status. "There are challenges, there's no doubt
about it," he said of the upcoming status review process. "But we've
argued that without some way to remove emotion from the discussion, and finding
a way to better quantify manatee success or failure, all you're going to do is argue
about this forever."
But boating regulations are just one component of the
manatee recovery program, and in the end possibly one of the easiest to
resolve. The more difficult problem is ensuring that manatees do not perish
from hypothermia in the winter months, when water temperatures in peninsular
For years, manatees have relied on both natural and
manmade sources of warm water to avoid winter stresses. These include warm
springs that emerge from the Floridan aquifer as well as hot water discharges
from power plants that are scattered throughout the manatee's range.
Virtually all of the state's electric utilities --
including Florida Power & Light (FPL), Progress Energy, and Tampa Electric
Company (TECO) -- now manage water discharges from their generators'
turbine-cooling systems to aid manatees. At some power plants, like FPL's Cape
Canaveral Plant on the Indian River east of Orlando, manatees have been known
to congregate by the hundreds in waters warmed by FPL's warm water discharges.
The same is true for the company's Riviera Plant in
"From a utility's perspective it's a very
complicated issue," said Winifred Perkins, FPL's manager of environmental
relations. "As the state's largest electricity provider, we can't dismiss
this. We do what we have to do."
Currently that means adhering to a wastewater
discharge permit clause calling for five FPL plants to provide a continuous
source of warm water to manatees through the winter months. Similar measures
are in place at the state's other large utilities, like Progress Energy and
TECO.
Dave Bruzek, a spokesman for Progress Energy, which
operates three power plants on the
With near universal agreement, even among
environmentalists, that power plants provide an essential benefit to manatees
and that warm water will continue to flow from discharge pipes to wintering
areas, concern about water resources has shifted to broader questions of water
consumption in
Hankla said securing clean, warm water -- particularly
from natural springs -- is the top issue facing manatee recovery this century.
"The animals don't go out and randomly look for warm water. The adults
teach their offspring where these water sources are," he said.
Another pressing issue is red tides, a form of toxic
algae that can poison manatees who come into contact with it. Some believe red
tides, which tend to form in warm waters, are related to nutrient loading and
other forms of human pollution.
At current population growth rates, officials expect
the Floridan aquifer to be drawn down more regularly, which combined with other
events like droughts, could pre-empt the natural feeding of warm springs that
manatees need to survive.
Teresa Monson, a spokeswoman for the St. Johns River
Water Management District, which includes booming
Rose, of the Save the Manatee Club, noted that a
number of warm springs have been lost over the last 50 years due to population
growth and fresh water demand. And those that remain face imminent risk from
overuse, landscape alterations, and agricultural and wastewater pollution.
"When you go out and add thousands and thousands
of homes in these recharge areas, these people are not going to go away,"
Rose said. "They may find other sources of drinking water. But if that
doesn't happen, it's the natural springs and ultimately the manatees that are
going to suffer." - Daniel
Cusick (Greenwire Southeast reporter)
Owner to
To be honest, no one else made
stuffed manatees back then. But the former fifth-grade science teacher stitched
her first while on maternity leave, and the next thing she knew everyone wanted
one. Even Ty Warner, the creator of the famed Beanie Babies, she claims, used
her patented method to stitch his own version of stuffed manatees.
From Bienkowski's garage, the
Manatee Toy Co. has grown into a downtown
Inside the small homey store with
wood floors and Jimmy Buffett songs playing on a constant loop, manatees adorn
baby clothes, wine corks, mugs, drain stoppers, champagne flutes, shot glasses,
wind chimes, figurines, backpacks, shopping bags, baby bags, cutting boards,
Christmas cards, postcards, street signs, T-shirts, sweat shirts, license
plates and salt shakers.
But before there was all this, there
were two stuffed manatee dolls.
Bienkowski, who has a background in
design, stitched them and gave them to her daughter Nicole in 1981. The
3-year-old dragged them everywhere, naming the larger gray toy Mandy and the
smaller, plush one Sweet Tea.
"People saw them,"
Bienkowski said. "Someone saw them at Port Paradise Dive Shop, and they
asked if they could have three." Soon, every dive shop in the city --
which claims to be "Home of the Manatee" -- wanted to sell some.
By the next year, Bienkowski had
sold a few hundred. Over the next decade, her small company sold the stuffed
manatees wholesale out of her
"My kids were babies, and
that's how they learned how to count," Bienkowski said. "Twelve
manatees went into a box."
In 1991, the Manatee Toy Co. moved
to its current location, where offerings of just five sizes of toy manatees
grew to include gator Christmas stockings, manatee puppets and stuffed shrimp
until the store became the menagerie it is today.
Guests from far away are not
uncommon at the store, and a guest book bears testament to the world travelers
who have stopped in. Recent pages show customers from
Just above his signature were
signatures of people from
"Every day is unique in
here," Bienkowski said, with a tinge of regret. She recalled the old movie
stars, cancer survivors and famous authors she has met and the conversations
she has had that make her wish she had kept a daily journal.
But it's too late. Bienkowski sold
the store on Nov. 15 to Helen Anderson, a former laboratory supervisor, who
wanted to run her own business. Bienkowski said she wants to spend more time
with her grown children, design more stuffed animals and firm up her manatee
patent with a lawyer and begin asking other companies to stop using it. She'd
rather her manatee design be used on toys that have a connection to the city of
Crystal River, Bienkowski said in a schoolteacher's soft, firm tone. She also hopes to go back into teaching.
But during the first three weeks of
December, Bienkowski helped
"You just don't give your baby
to anybody," Bienkowski said.
Anderson, a former customer who
bought the store as soon as she found out it was for sale, said she loves
manatees because of their "sheer size -- the primitiveness of them."
"And their cute 'lil blue
eyes," Bienkowski added like a proud mother. - Justin George (
Recent Dugong Research in
The main research effort has been
done in
Our research covered three aspects
of the ecology of
Dugong observations were made from
an engine-powered boat. On this boat, four persons would observe, each at a
different angle from the boat for one hour, while the engine was switched off.
Two persons would search with binoculars, two would search without binoculars.
Every 15 minutes the binoculars would switch between the persons. In this way,
the entire area surrounding the boat was covered with and without binoculars
without wearing out the persons too much for them to stay concentrated.
Dugongs were spotted 15 times in
We found seagrass in different
areas, but only in shallow water. Most seagrass beds were small and coverage
was low; only three seagrass beds were large (2500, 1500 and 2000 m²). In
deeper parts of the bay and parts where a thick layer of mud was on the bottom,
no seagrass would grow. In addition, turbidity in the Bay was found to be
medium to high, and historical data showed that the Bay had been severely
affected by oil pollution in the past.
Our observations show that the mud
in the bay forms a threat for the seagrass in two ways, both by forming a thick
muddy layer on parts of the bay bottom on which nothing grows, and by making
the bay more turbid, so the sunlight does not reach the bottom of the bay
anymore. In addition, historical data show impact of oil pollution on both the mangrove
ecosystem and seagrass beds.
Local fishermen also confirm that
the amount of seagrass and the number of dugongs have declined in the last ten
years. They also say they do not hunt the dugong. - Hans de Iongh
SIERRA
LEONE
The West African Manatee in
At one location a manatee was observed. The animal lifted
its head twice above the water and went down under when the boat approached too
close. It was observed in troubled, less than 1.5 m deep salt water close to
the
Apart from this observation, 11 fishing villages along
the coast were visited, and interviews with local fishermen were organized in
order to get information about wildlife and related hunting pressure. These
interviews showed manatees still to occur along the entire coast in all
estuaries, especially in the Scarcies area and the
ABSTRACTS
The
following abstract is of a paper presented at the 64th annual meeting of the
Society of Vertebrate Paleontology,
Eocene and Oligocene Evolution and Structure of the Aquatic Herbivore
Adaptive Zone in the West Atlantic and
M. Clementz1, D. P.
Domning2, L. G. Barnes3, and B. L. Beatty4
(1. Smithsonian Inst. Marine Station,
Modern
marine ecosystems support fewer herbivorous mammals than their terrestrial
counterparts, and include only four nonsympatric species of Sirenia (e.g., sea
cows, dugongs, and manatees). Yet, the
diversity of aquatic herbivores through most of the Cenozoic was typically
higher, encompassing periods when multiple species co-inhabited the same
regions, including species other than sirenians (i.e., desmostylians,
xenarthrans). With so many large mammal
species foraging within a single locality, available resources of aquatic
vegetation were likely to have been finely partitioned among herbivores,
creating several distinct feeding niches.
We have begun to define these feeding niches using features of cranial
morphology, enamel carbon isotope values, and dental microwear as evidence of
dietary preferences. Together, these
independent lines of dietary evidence allow us to explore long-term patterns in
the appearance and diverisification of these niches, providing insight into the
development and structure of ancient aquatic communities. Three key regions we
plan to study include the West Atlantic-Caribbean, Tethys-Mediterranean, and
Eastern Pacific, all of which were sites of diverse aquatic herbivore faunas
throughout most of the Cenozoic. Here we
present initial data collected from Eocene and Oligocene fossil localities in
the West Atlantic-Caribbean region.
Fossils of aquatic herbivores collected from these deposits include
multiple species from three separate families of Sirenia, including the earliest
and most primitive family, the Prorastomidae.
Morphological evidence suggests that the locomotor capabilities, habitat
preferences, and dietary preferences of these species were quite distinct and,
when combined with carbon isotope evidence collected from tooth enamel, may
reflect differences in the amount and type of seagrass included in each species
diet.
The following abstracts are
of papers and posters presented at the Florida
Marine Mammal Health Conference,
<http://www.vetmed.ufl.edu/marinemammal/flmmhc/Conf2005/ConfHome.htm>
Levels of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Subcutaneous Blubber
Samples from the
Bigelow, M.M., Keith, E.O (Oceanographic Center, Nova Southeastern
University)
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)
have been recognized as human carcinogens since 1775. Since that time, PAHs have been shown to have
many other deleterious effects, and 16 PAHs have been listed as priority
pollutants by the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clean Water Act. PAHs have a strong potential to pollute the
waters around
Recently manatees have shown
symptoms characteristic of PAH accumulation, i.e. impaired immune responses,
prolonged umbilical healing, and eye pathology.
To date many studies have been published on the effects of PAH
accumulation in marine mammals, but none have been published on manatees. The purpose of this study was to conduct an
introductory investigation on the levels of PAHs in the
Twenty-eight subcutaneous manatee blubber
samples were obtained from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation
Commission Marine Mammal Pathobiology Laboratory archive. PAHs were extracted using an ASE 100
Accelerated Solvent Extraction System (Dionex Corporation, Sunnyvale, CA), and
the 16 primary pollutant PAHs were quantified using High Pressure Liquid
Chromatography (Perkin-Elmer Corporation, Boston, MA) with a Vydac 201TP5415
reverse-phase (C18, 5 µm, 4.6 mm ID x 150 mm) HPLC column (Grace Vydac,
Hesperia, CA), and calibrated by
comparison to a standard priority pollutant PAH mixture.
PAHs were found in the concentrations
range of 0.001-23.565 ug/g. All animals
examined were found to have at least one priority pollutant PAH, and trace
amounts of all 16 priority pollutant PAHs were found in one animal. These preliminary results indicate that
*,+Bonde,
R. K., +Lewis, P., +Samuelson, D., ±Self-Sullivan, C., #Auil, N., and #Powell, J. A.
(*
This is the first reported
evidence of epibiont fauna on the skin of West Indian manatees (Trichechus
manatus) outside of
Specimens were preserved and
examined using both light dissection and scanning electron microscopy. All specimens were collected in the course of
radio-tagging studies that have been conducted in
Manatee
Protection Rulemaking by the FWC: How the FWC Implements its Statutory
Responsibilities
Scott Calleson (
The
state of
The rule making process can be divided into three b