(Beth Clifton collage)
Manatees are not big crowd-pleasers, but they are Florida’s biggest & most unique native mammal
ORLANDO, Florida––Some of the best news for manatees in decades came separately, quietly, almost simultaneously in mid-March 2025 from the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission and from SeaWorld Orlando.
The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission issued an official declaration that manatees are no longer starving to death due to a pollution-induced die-off of sea lettuce along the both the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of Florida that began circa 2016.
(SeaWorld media photo by Jeannette Conrado)
1,000 manatee rescues
SeaWorld Orlando celebrated 1,000 successful releases of rescued and rehabilitated manatees since 1976, a number of particular significance because for much of that time the total manatee population was only in the low thousands.
Further, without heroic efforts, including those of SeaWorld Orlando, the manatee population might have dropped back to the low thousands during the worst of the sea lettuce die-off.
The SeaWorld celebration focused on Chihiro, a young female manatee.
“When Chihiro was found in the cold waters of Coffeepot Bayou, she weighed just 190 pounds – thin, stressed, and struggling to survive her first winter alone,” said SeaWorld publicist Hannah Pfahler.
Chihiro should have weighed more than twice as much, and at full maturity, five to six times as much.
(Jeannette Conrado/SeaWorld media photo)
“Her rescue isn’t just symbolic”
“Her rescue isn’t just symbolic,” Pfahler told ANIMALS 24-7. “It reflects a rising trend. More manatees, especially calves, are in crisis due to cold snaps, habitat changes, and difficulty finding warm water” during cold snaps.
Manatees are in thermal trouble at temperatures of less than 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Among the ironies of global warming is that Florida, historically much warmer all year, is now having ever more cold snaps due to climactic instability.
“SeaWorld’s rescue team is adapting rapidly,” Pfahler said, “expanding care areas, triaging cases, and making room for the most critical animals––like Chihiro, who was recently moved to the exhibit space to help free up space for others in need.”
SeaWorld and manatees?
Yes; marine mammal rescue and rehabilitation, including of manatees, could be considered SeaWorld’s most successful program of benefit to wildlife.
Thetis & Amphrite at the California Academy of the Sciences. (Beth Clifton collage)
“Helping more than 41,000 animals to date”
“SeaWorld is one of the largest marine animal rescue organizations in the world, helping more than 41,000 animals to date,” SeaWorld advertises.
ANIMALS 24-7 has often seen the evidence, most memorably the 1995 SeaWorld rescue of two Pacific white-sided dolphins from a severely undersized tank at the California Academy of the Sciences, where they had been held for 18 and 20 years, respectively.
(See Dolphins in undersized tank to be moved.)
Manatee rescue is among the missions the SeaWorld rescue team performs most successfully, with normally the least fanfare.
“In 2024 alone, SeaWorld Orlando rescued 61 manatees and was able to rehabilitate and return 38 manatees,” Pfahler detailed.
Craig Pittman & friend.
SeaWorld & manatees?
Manatees don’t do spectacular leaps, or send trainers flying into the air with “rocket hops,” no manatee ever killed a trainer, inspiring an award-winning but controversial documentary, and while some people do pay good money to swim with manatees, “swim with manatees” attractions are scarcely a staple of Florida tourism.
The words “SeaWorld” and “manatees,” in short, do not exactly go together in either public imagination or activist nightmares.
Yet SeaWorld can claim credit right alongside the Save the Manatee Club, the late singer and manatee ambassador Jimmy Buffet (1946-2023), and Manatee Insanity author and journalist Craig Pittman, among others, for helping manatees to survive not only decades as an endangered species, but also what proved to be grossly premature removal from the U.S. federal endangered species list.
(See Jimmy Buffett, 76, was there when needed for dolphins & manatees and Will more boat kills than ever stop proposal to ease manatee safeguards?)
(Beth Clifton collage)
Prematurely downlisted
An officially endangered species ever since the first U.S. federal endangered species list was designated in1967, manatees were downlisted to “threatened” by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in 2017, early in the first Donald Trump administration.
Though recent counts had suggested that the Florida manatee population was growing, the 2017 downlisting came chiefly through lobbying pressure from speedboaters, speedboat manufacturers, shoreline developers, and a succession of Republican governors and Republican-majority legislatures catering to them, not that the Democratic record on behalf of manatees was ever especially good.
“In 2015, Florida had 915,000 registered boats,” Pittman recounted as the downlisting loomed, “a number that last year topped 950,000, more than any other state.”
(See Favor to speedboaters: Trump administration downlists manatees.)
(Beth Clifton collage)
More visible does not necessarily mean more manatees
“The official U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimate of the population was 6,300,” Pittman wrote. “Some estimates said we hit 7,000.”
This was, to be sure, far more manatees than had been estimated many years earlier, but far more manatees were seen at least partly because of markedly more human incursions into what formerly had been relatively isolated manatee habitat.
In other words, there were not necessarily more manatees, just more manatees who could be easily counted when they crowded into the warmer waters near electrical generating station cooling water discharge pipes during cold snaps.
(U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service photo)
Record counts
In January 2024, for instance, Tampa Electric announced a new record count of 1,100 manatees from its water discharge pipe observation area, up by about 250 from the old record of 850, set in 2023.
Blue Springs State Park in Volusia County meanwhile counted a record 932 manatees on January 21, 2023, up from the previous record of 736 spotted on New Year’s Day 2023.
But the desperation of manatees crowding together for warmth in cold weather scarcely signified a population surge, even if there had been some population recovery since the worst of the sea grass shortage.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Boat strike
When manatees were downlisted in 2017, the major source of known manatee mortality was boat strike, historically accounting for about 25% of all documented manatee deaths.
After manatees were downlisted, manatee deaths due to boat strikes trended steadily upward.
“In 2019, Florida’s boaters set a new record for killing manatees in the state’s waterways,” observed Pittman.
The 2019 boat strike toll of 134 manatees topped the 2018 record of 122, “which topped the 2017 record of 108, which topped the 2016 record of 104,” Pittman recited.
Jeannette Conrado/SeaWorld media photo)
Algal blooms
Then the Florida manatee population crashed due to starvation, at a rate that made the rising boat strike casualties look small.
Mourned Pittman in his Florida Phoenix column of April 6, 2023, “Over the past two years we’ve lost 2,000 manatees. Many died of starvation caused by algae blooms that killed off the seagrass they usually eat.
“In 2021, 1,100 manatees died, shattering all previous records. Another 800 died in 2022.”
“Tampa Bay used to be a widely hailed success story for restoring seagrass,” Pittman recalled. “By 2016, the people working toward bringing it back had achieved their long-sought goal of 38,000 acres, a size not seen since the 1950s.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Human pollution
“But between 2016 and 2022, Tampa Bay lost more than 11,000 acres of seagrass, a decline of more than 25%––and the same occurred in the Indian River Lagoon, and in other Florida manatee habitats.
“The cause is human pollution — stormwater runoff carrying massive loads of it, floods that overwhelm sewer plants, and so forth,” Pittman explained.
Pollution in turn fueled “the growth of a macroalgae, Caulerpa prolifera. Instead of beneficial seagrass,” Pittman wrote, “in some places where seagrass used to grow, there’s mucky sediment and an algae bloom.”
Further, Pittman mentioned, “rising sea levels caused by climate change are hurting efforts to bring the seagrass back. Seagrass needs sunlight to pierce the water so it can grow,” but parts of Tampa Bay and the Indian River Lagoon are now as much as six inches deeper than they were when the manatee population was believed to have been recovering.
(Jeannette Conrado/SeaWorld media photo)
“Unusual Mortality Event”
The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission declared the manatee die-off “an Unusual Mortality Event” in 2021, purchasing $250,000 worth of land-grown lettuce from South Carolina and raising funds from the public to keep the feeding program going in 2022.
The lettuce-feeding program was credited with lowering the manatee death toll to 555 in 2023, but if fewer manatees remain, obviously fewer can die.
(See Starving Florida manatees need more than just lettuce for Christmas.)
“The agency closed its “Unusual Mortality Event” along Florida’s east coast for the sea cows on March 14, 2025,” reported Molly Reed for Orlando.com.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Manatees still at risk
That, explained Save the Manatee Club director of science and conservation Beth Brady, “just means manatees have enough forage that they’re not dying off in large numbers.”
According to the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission, “Researchers have not documented a manatee death from starvation due to lack of forage for two years.”
Wrote Reed, “The Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission attributed the positive change to seagrass within the Indian River Lagoon area slowly growing back.
“Brady says there are some areas where they have been able to find adequate seagrass for foraging,” Reed qualified. “However, there are still water quality concerns.
Explained Brady, “A lot of agricultural runoff, storm water runoff, and leaky septic systems or septic tanks could also bring another harmful algal bloom if we’re not careful.”
(See Nitrogen kills Florida sawfish––& manatees––but no one wants to say so.)
2011 photo of a hefty manatee and plenty of sea grass at Wakulla Springs, Florida
(Dave Pauli photo)
Rising mortality
Even the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission acknowledged that the end of starvation deaths “does not negate the unprecedented loss of manatees, the FWC said in a social media post,” Reed wrote.
“A recent Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission report shows 243 manatees died between January 1 to March 21 this year, which is already a higher mortality rate than 2023 and 2024,” Reed continued.
“Dead manatee calves are also being found in Volusia and Brevard counties.”
Assessed Brady, “This indicates that manatees are returning to reproduction but may not have the capacity to be able to bring calves to term. Most of these calves were stillborn.”
(Jeannette Conrado/SeaWorld media photo)
Reckless & Churro
Boat strikes are also still a constant threat to manatees. The SeaWorld Orlando media release celebrating 1,000 manatee rescues, for instance, also described “The rescue and rehabilitation of Reckless and Churro, a mother-daughter manatee pair. Rescued in 2022,” SeaWorld Orlando said, “Reckless suffered a catastrophic boat strike that shattered her shoulder, leaving her in critical condition. Her newborn calf, Churro, was just one to two days old at the time of rescue. Over 20 months of intensive care, SeaWorld Orlando’s expert veterinary team performed 12 lifesaving procedures and provided more than 17,000 hours of specialized care to ensure the pair could be successfully returned to their natural habitat.”
Merritt & Beth Clifton
SeaWorld Orlando pronounces itself remaining ready to respond “to manatees in need due to cold stress, boat strikes, entanglements, and other life-threatening conditions, with state-of-the-art resources, including temperature-controlled recovery pools, diagnostic equipment, and a specialized team of veterinarians and experts.”
Those personnel and facilities appear likely to be needed to help ensure manatee survival far into the future, even if manatees never become star SeaWorld attractions.
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