Manatees Deaths

Nearly 1,000 manatees gathered at Blue Spring State Park in Volusia County on one of the coldest winter days of the season. Here's why the growing number of manatees at the park is encouraging.

Over 1,000 Florida manatees died in 2021. That number is the peak in the current unusual mortality event.

Nutrient buildup from runoff, increased development and septic systems have led to harmful algal blooms in Indian River Lagoon. These blooms then decimate the seagrass, which is the manatee’s food source.

Wildlife officials say a two-year experimental feeding program for starving Florida manatees will not immediately resume this winter as conditions have improved for the threatened marine mammals and the seagrass on which they depend.

It is Manatee Awareness month in November, poignant in particular in Lee County, which leads Florida with more than 100 sea cow deaths so far this year.

Nearly 2,000 manatees died in Florida in 2021 and 2022 as water pollution killed the seagrass they feed on. The manatee was downlisted in 2017 from endangered to threatened, over the objections of scientists, environmentalists and citizens.

Water quality and seagrass health play a big role in marine mammals’ survival anywhere in the state.

But manatees are still struggling throughout the state.

More manatees have died in Southwest Florida so far this year. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission found Pinellas County is second in the state in sea cow deaths with 36.

More than 2,000 of the gentle sea cows have died in Florida in the last two years, mainly from algae blooms that smothers the sea grasses they need to survive.

Florida's manatees have been dying at rates that are considered unsustainable in the past several years. So the Clearwater Marine Aquarium has broken ground on a new facility to help treat stricken sea cows.

The full Florida Senate okayed a bill Wednesday aimed at addressing the state’s alarming rate of seagrass loss and record breaking manatee deaths.