Initial Reports
February 22, 2013 A crisp chill sang through the air on a steady sea breeze as I walked across the wooden bridge separating the barrier island from Round Island on the Indian River Lagoon (IRL). The air was cool enough to make me reflexively warm my hands in my pockets before I continued to the midpoint of the bridge. Not that south Florida can ever truly be considered cold by the standards of most people. Slightly above 50 degrees and sunny isn’t exactly “brace yourself for the apocalypse” weather. Still, there was something unseen, almost halting in the air. If I had only known what was to come in the months ahead I might have taken my time there. Round Island is my “go-to” spot for photographing and filming Florida manatees. A resident group of nearly three dozen or so sea cows stay in the general vicinity of the tiny island park. The usually warm, brackish waters of the lagoon provide a natural shelter and semi-peaceful home for the marine mammals. It was, as I had come to deem any day without a manatee sighting, a slow day. I paused for a while atop the bridge and then headed below it to get a waterline look. At first glance Round Island doesn’t seem much different than any Florida intracoastal area. Ringed with mangroves and dotted with tiny islands, the area surrounding the park is idyllic in its serenity but fairly mundane-looking to the untrained eye. You just have to know where to look. Scanning the opposite shore, looking through my camera’s telephoto lens, I could see four ospreys perched on barren branches. Below them, a collection of brown pelicans and a couple of ibis filled the lower tiers of the mangrove branches. To my right, nearly a football field’s length away, the occasional dorsal fin of a dolphin surfaced. In the water just past my feet several silver-colored fish darted by and, a moment later, a stingray gracefully flapped through the shallows, feeding on minnows. A river otter made a quick splash into the water down a muddy slide hidden below the foliage. Indian River Lagoon is acknowledged by many biologists as the most bio-diverse estuary in North America. Within its waters are hundreds of millions of animals and millions of plants that coexist interdependent on each other for their health and survival. The plethora of wildlife to be seen around its waters was one of the main reasons I chose to live in the area. After an hour, I decided this would be a “no manatee” day and called it like an emergency room doctor might call out the time of death for a lost patient. “9:25 a.m.,” I thought to myself. “No manatees sighted.” In retrospect I should have picked up on the oddity of it. I had previously made more than 50 trips to Round Island and only twice had I left without sighting a single manatee. But it was cold – well Florida’s version of cold anyway—and it was likely the manatees (which are warm-blooded mammals) had made their way south to warmer waters. One morning, about a week or so after my trip out to Round Island, a darker possibility for the lack of manatees emerged. My morning ritual includes scanning online news sources for topics that interest me. I didn’t have to look too deeply to peak my interest, though. Google News was flush with headlines stating that hundreds of manatees had mysteriously died around Florida since the start of 2013. I searched out other news articles online and was met with story after story of scores of dead manatees being found floating dead in Florida waters. In the following weeks the pace of the die-off quickened. It was the ferocity of the “hidden” killer that captured media attention from the outset. On screen or in print the old villain, “Red Tide,” twirled his evil mustache and media outlets were quick to “boo” and “hiss” accordingly. It was a two-week news cycle. It was a cycle without answers, only new questions, dire predictions and sound bites. The concern was genuine enough. The phrase “gentle giants” found its way into every news report. Ostensibly, no one wants to see manatees harmed or dying by the hundreds. That’s why it made national headlines. That’s why the die-off mattered to folks living in Indiana or Sweden. But, after a few weeks of rehashing red tide theories and showing footage of bloated manatee carcasses, the mass media had its fill and moved on to more important things like reality television starlets having children with pop singers. The IRL is my backyard, though, and it wasn’t something I wanted to ignore. So, I started to find experts to talk to, people who know what’s really going on, and decided to put together a short documentary about the issue. I hoped maybe it would help keep a spotlight on the manatees just long enough to codify folks into helping them… or maybe it would inspire people to ask the real questions about how the toxic algae blooms happened in the first place. The idea to create a documentary grew to include five fellow film students from Indian River State College and the support of Dr. Matt Brooks, our mass communications professor. The genesis of that project became “Saving Sirenia: Manatees in Crisis,” a non-commercial website and show aimed at keeping the story alive. The resulting interviews, research and my personal observations coalesced into this story. In essence, this is the story of what I’ve learned while on the trail of a silent killer and about the “henchmen” who do its dirty work. It’s also about the 340 million accomplices, including myself, who live in the United States. It’s both a complex story and one that has more moving parts to it than a printing press. Also, “villains” are really not villains and “heroes,” well there are subtle shades of those, too. The longer you spend trying to find a person, company or group to point fingers at; the more fingers begin to point right back at you. By the end of February one thing was crystal clear… the die-off was in full swing. Knowing the culprit is only half the battle in stemming the tide of the current manatee die-off.
It's easy to say, "nitrates make algae blooms." But in doing so the science gets watered down greatly. Yes, fertilizers (and their associated runoff in our waterways) increases the levels of nitrates in the water. But why? The answer lies in a chemical compound called urea. If it sounds familiar that's because it is in you right now...in your urine. Urea is a natural, nitrate-rich compound and bonds with water easily. Algae needs a nitrate-rich environment to grow in. The type of algae spawned is contingent on several factors. However, if conditions are right, the algae will produce domoic acid. It's this acid that can do severe damage to marine mammals and their nervous systems. In California, during the late 1990s and early 2000s, domoic acid from algae blooms laid wasted to hundreds of sea lions (and eventually pelicans and dolphins). It has yet to be proven the domoic acid is the toxin causing the IRL manatees to drown. But this old journalist is following the blood trail. I'm compiling data. The chart to the left shows the number of known dead manatees as recorded by the FWC from April, May and June of this year. I created the chart because as a hearing-impaired person I find that I digest things better if I can see them.
For a crisis that is said to be "slowing down" the data sure does paint a more difficult picture. What I see is a die-off that's on track to take the lives of more than 1,000 manatees this year. In some ways the crisis is only beginning. As attention shifts away from the story so do the solutions. Only active strategies aimed at lessening the amount of algae blooms and replenishing sea grass beds will stems the tide of this genocide. I keep looking at the number - 630 - and I try to digest what this means being only midway through the year.
My latest kayak trip out around Round Island showed me an eerie scene. We made two complete circuits of the island and saw only a single female manatee and her calf. It's mid-June. It's warm. There was nothing but blue skies and sunshine to be found that day. But it was sadly quiet and oddly still. Last year at this time there were anywhere from 15 to 25 manatees in these waters. They were active and visible, their distinct "pffft" as each one surfaced for air could be heard across the lagoon. It was the same in 2011. Manatees as far as the eye could see. This year the toll - the 630 gone since January - can be seen and felt. The manatees are still sick, still dying and their number still fall. What happens if we have another "bad year?" What happens if the sea grass becomes more sparse? What happens if the toxic macro algae beckons the hungry marine mammals to their deaths? What happens if this is the year that starts the extinction? Help the show stay on the road ...and get a really cool T-shirt in the process! These limited-edition shirts are part of a new crowd-funding campaign aimed solely at covering expenses for our next two episodes.
But, let's be honest... these shirts are AWESOME! With all original artwork and design by Rick Wood, the t-shirts make a bold statement of support. Check them out here: http://teespring.com/manateesincrisis When you get to the root of it, a show (television or web) must have a theme or story to guide it along. Even documentaries need to present information thematically.
Manatees in Crisis is obviously about the threats facing the Florida manatees. But it's also about the habitat they live in, the communities that border them and the laws that protect - or sometimes remove protections - the marine mammals. Since we do the show in short chunks, we're likely to revisit the same themes more than once a season. Webisode One, "Defining the Crisis," is a perfect example of that philosophy. Pragmatically speaking the crisis is evolving and what was true two months ago is no longer wholly accurate. For example, the mortality rate has slowed dramatically since April. It hasn't stopped but we're not seeing dozens of dead manatees wash up on shore each morning. Because of the nature of algae blooms this was predicted while the die-off was already underway. However, it's not a "happy ending" to the story. Macro algae is still (albeit less of them) killing manatees and the biggest threat right now has shifted back to the historical one: Boats. Every year manatees are struck and killed by boats to the tune of more than 100 of them annually. The algae issue and the loss of healthy sea grass beds is also not under control. A similar year - a similar macro algae bloom - next winter stands to be both likely and potentially catastrophic to the species. Let's say we lose a total of 700 this year. The total population at the start of the year was around 4,800... or less. So, maybe there are 4,000 left after this die-off. But if they encounter the same threats next year, suddenly we'll see the population drop to nearly 3K... maybe less. If their habitat is not improving and sea grass continues to decline (which current data supports that assumption), how many years until we see less than 1,000 manatees left in Florida? So, the theme... the "story" will always center on reporting the real story. Hi all!
We're pleased to announce that the first installment of "Manatees in Crisis" is up LIVE on YouTube and here (directly) on the website. Watch it, give it a "Like" and let us know how we did! http://youtu.be/FmnmBTa8KBc Cheers, - Rick Go to our Home page or click this link to view it: http://youtu.be/nIlLEpdDCrg
Want to be a part of the solution? Please take a moment to check out our project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1994564730/sirenia-manatees-in-crisis-stands-up-to-extinction
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