Manatees don’t hire lobbyists, pollute Florida’s waters, drive boats recklessly or use septic tanks

Bellissima, a 1,500-pound West Indian manatee, was slipped back into the waters off Horton Park in Cape Coral after more than a year of recovering from a series of injuries.A manatee moves through Blind Pass between Sanibel and Captiva in June.

November is Manatee Awareness Month, and while people from all over the world know a lot about Florida’s famous manatees, there’s a lot about manatees that people don’t know. Let me break down some manatee secrets:

▪ Manatees don’t vote. They don’t champion Tallahassee (too far from shore to swim) or Capitol Hill (too cold). You will not participate in any rulemaking process, public statement, written comment or any other part of the regulatory process.

Never in recorded history has a manatee authored a law or introduced a bill. Manatees know nothing of appropriations. They don’t make blunt speeches. They do not pool funds or participate in campaign events.

Manatees prefer to be in clean Florida waters and eat seaweed.

▪ Manatees don’t drive boats. There has never been a case of a manatee driving a boat and hitting a human with a boat. Manatees disregard speed zones in their boats, drink alcohol and operate boats, or drive outside of restricted motor zones. Manatees like calm, clean water where they are least likely to be hit by speedboats.

▪ Manatees do not pollute. They don’t build tall buildings, use septic tanks, or fertilize their lawns. They are not sugar farmers or phosphate miners, nor are they in the Army Corps of Engineers and responsible for the water discharges of Lake Okeechobee through the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie Rivers.

They’re not cutting down mangrove forests, paving over the Everglades, or bleaching the Florida Coral Reef Tract. Believe it or not, manatees are not responsible for increasingly frequent and severe harmful algal blooms like red tides that are wiping out their main food source, sea grass. Manatees prefer healthy ecosystems that have not been destroyed by wild, unchecked coastal development.

▪ Manatees don’t make garbage. They don’t throw rubbish down storm drains or onto the streets, throw cigarette butts in the sand, or use endless amounts of single-use items like plastic bags, plastic straws and paraphernalia, or plastic bottles. In fact, manatees don’t use consumer goods at all—they don’t need the products of the throwaway culture that we humans have created.

▪ Manatees do not contribute to a changing climate. Manatees don’t drive cars and don’t generate electricity from fossil fuels. Manatees do not emit any carbon into the atmosphere at all.

In fact, they are responsible for keeping important carbon sinks like seagrass beds healthy by pruning and manicuring them through their eating habits.

Manatees are not taking part in climate talks like those held this month in Egypt at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Manatees are highly vulnerable to a warming ocean, as warming water exacerbates harmful algal blooms and increases seagrass cover loss, and yet manatees have no voice at the table when it comes to the climate change debate.

I encourage people who love manatees to adopt their best habits – don’t pollute, don’t litter, don’t recklessly develop the Florida coast. Think more of the manatee as you go about your everyday life—when you vote, when you shop, and when you try to do your part to reduce the impact of climate change. The future of the manatee depends on us acting now to protect our oceans and shores.

Jon Paul “JP” Brooker is a director of Florida Conservation and an attorney for the Ocean Conservancy. He is a native Floridian based in St. Petersburg.

You might also like

Comments are closed.