Opinion-Editorial
For Immediate Release: January 29, 2003

Biologists with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's (FWC) Florida Marine Research Institute (FMRI) conducted a statewide synoptic survey on January 21-22. On Florida's Gulf Coast, observers counted 1,299 manatees while 1,814 manatees were counted on Florida's East Coast. The total number of manatees counted during the survey was 3,113. Survey conditions were considered optimal. The first synoptic survey to count manatees this year was conducted on January 9 and produced a total of 2,861 manatees.Survey conditions were also considered optimal for the January 9 count.

Save the Manatee Club's position on this issue has been clear and consistent: Annual statewide surveys cannot be reliably used to indicate manatee population trends (whether the manatee population is increasing, stable, or decreasing).

Why not? Because the number of manatees counted varies considerably from year to year, and even from survey to survey within the same year. The survey is a count of manatees using various warm water refuges on a given day.

Weather conditions such as winds, cloud cover, and air and water temperatures affect the counts immeasurably. Part of the methodology for the surveys is to choose a day after the passage of a cold front and put several teams of experienced observers in the air on that day to count manatees at known aggregation (congregation) sites. However, even the cold fronts are widely variable in intensity and duration, which also affects the number of manatees counted.

Using synoptic surveys to say the manatee population is growing, stable, or decreasing -- and more importantly -- healthy, is like using the gate count at a Florida theme park on a beautiful day in early spring to extrapolate the number of the people who might pass through those gates on another randomly chosen day. Further, the number tells us nothing about the demographics of the people who visited the theme park. For example, are they young, old or middle-aged? Are they fit or are they out of shape? Will they return next year or not? None of this can be determined by merely counting the number of people passing through the gates on a chosen day when conditions are ideal for a high number of visitors.

Save the Manatee Club maintains that we need to clarify what we definitively know versus what we need to learn, because the issues have become quite muddled in previous weeks and months. What we definitely know is more manatees are being killed by boats than ever before. In 2002, a record 95 manatees were killed by boats as compared to 81 for the same period in 2001 and 80 for the previous five-year average. We can and must do something about this awful statistic.

We also know that other threats to manatee habitat are increasing. Warm water availability is uncertain, with issues surrounding the fate of aging power plants and with diminished flows of fresh water springs from human withdrawals.

We still need to learn is what the population trends are. To know this, we need to be able to assess the demographics of the population, such as age structure, reproductive rates, fitness of individuals, and annual survival rates for different age classes. Finding the answers to these questions and others takes time and yet they are the questions to answer if we honestly want to ascertain whether or not the manatee population is in recovery mode.

Synoptic survey results: 1991 - 2003

Get more information on the current status of the manatee population