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If you’ve spent any time in Florida in the USA, you may have been lucky
enough to encounter one of their most famous locals.
And it’s not the Florida Man. It’s the Florida manatee.
These slow-moving sea cows face a number of
human-caused threats, from boat collisions to habitat loss.
One of the most surprising threats is also caused by humans:
the closing of aging power plants.
The good news is, since we created this situation in the first place,
we should be able to find a way out of it.
The Florida manatee is the most northerly subspecies of West Indian manatee.
It’s found almost exclusively in the southeastern USA.
Though commonly called “sea cows,” they’re more closely related to elephants.
You’ll find these amazing marine mammals hanging out in shallow
coastal waters, from seagrass meadows to salt marshes.
And they’ve adapted to some pretty warm temperatures.
That might be surprising to hear, given that they look pretty, uh... insulated.
But that’s not actually the case.
Combine that with their low metabolic rates,
and they’re just not great at keeping themselves warm.
These gentle giants can actually die if the water
stays below eighteen to twenty degrees Celsius for long stretches.
When temperatures reach as low as ten to twelve degrees,
they can succumb to the cold in only a few days. And we might think of Florida as pretty balmy,
but even the southernmost tip can hit these temperatures during cold winters.
Although they don’t come off as the most athletic of species,
manatees can actually cover significant distances during seasonal migrations.
Some individuals travel as far as 830 kilometers
between their summer and winter hangouts.
However, instead of taking on longer migrations, some
populations of manatees seek out refuge in warm water to survive cold spells.
That is, pockets of warm water in an otherwise cooler area.
These could be naturally occurring springs or passive thermal basins,
which are heated by the sun, ground water, or other natural phenomena.
Or they can be the discharged water from power plant cooling systems.
And these unintentional man-made refuges are really popular with manatees.
A 2004 report found that of the 14 warm water refuges in northern
and central Florida, 10 were outfalls from power plants.
These power plants attract around 60% of all of Florida’s manatees.
The worrying thing is, all of these manatee-attracting power plants are
decades old, and are either close to retirement or have shut down already.
And these days, restrictions on thermal pollution
prohibit new power plants from discharging notably warmer waters.
This means once these old plants are out of commission,
most of the warm water refuges the manatees currently depend on will be too.
What’s most distressing is that, while other populations take on longer winter
migrations to find safety from the cold, the manatees who have come to depend on
a particular power plant don’t seem to shift their habits.
Calves learn from their moms what refuges to use,
and typically stick with the same site their whole lives.
And if past power plant retirements are anything to go by,
the manatees will keep coming back after the warm water is gone,
even if it means succumbing to the cold.
On top of that, the natural springs that manatees depend
on may also be disappearing thanks to climate change and human overuse.
But there are ways we can help wean manatees off of power plants.
One possible way is by literally erecting sea cow fencing.
By shifting these barriers further away from the plant over time,
the manatees might be encouraged to find new naturally
warmed water refuges elsewhere.
Protecting the waters they currently use is also key,
to ensure there aren’t further losses of natural
warm winter hangouts beyond the power plants.
Another solution could be to make other warm water areas more accessible,
through better management of natural springs and removing barriers that may
impede larger numbers of manatees from using them.
There’s even talk of making new human-made warm water refuges that aren’t tied
to another industry, so there isn’t the same risk of them aging out of service.
There is still a lot of work that needs to be done to determine which of these
options are the most beneficial to the manatees and ensure
they don’t harm any other species in the meantime.
The good news is with multiple options to explore,
there’s hope for protecting these much-loved sea cows
from meeting a frigid demise. Thank you for watching this episode of SciShow!
And thank you to today’s sponsor, Wren.
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Over the long term, we need governments to fund these projects,
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Thanks again for watching.
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