Boaters Urged To Be On the Lookout For Manatees

Officials are warning Gulf Coast boaters to be on the lookout for manatees as they take to the water this Memorial Day. MPB’s Phoebe Judge reports.

The West Indian Manatee is not indigenous to the waters of the Mississippi Sound, they are more commonly found off the coast of Florida, but over the years more and more have been showing up. Those animals that do are usually the stragglers who get thrown off course while migrating in the spring and fall says Dr. Moby Solangi, executive director of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies,

“It could be the currents that bring them this way, that induce them to travel this far. They’re very calm, they’re very docile, they are slow swimming. They can get as large as 1500 to 2000 lbs.”

For their size and their diet, which consists mainly of aquatic vegetation, manatees are often described as ‘sea cows.’ While Florida has designated manatee protected areas and clear waters which allow for easy visibility, Mississippi waters pose a greater challenge for manatees says Jennifer Buchanan with the Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve,

“It’s very difficult because they could be anywhere. You can’t see them because the water is ice tea brown. When they come up you just see their muzzle, they are air breathers. They’re mammals so they have to stay near the surface.”

And that means that the hard to see manatees are very threatened by the props on boats. The Department of Marine Resources is urging boaters to travel in deeper channels and slow down. If a manatee is spotted boaters are urged to maintain at least 100 feet of distance and report all sightings to the Department of Marine Resources.