Florida Manatee

A sea cow related to elephants

Manatees belong to the Sirenia, a small order of fully aquatic plant eaters that also includes the dugong. Their closest living relatives on land are elephants and hyraxes. Adults average about 10 feet and 1,000 pounds, and the biggest reach about 13 feet and 3,500 pounds. They can live for decades, 60 years or more in some cases.

They are slow by design. A manatee cruises at a few miles an hour, surfaces every few minutes to breathe when active, and can rest on the bottom for up to about 20 minutes between breaths, which is how the one in the photograph at the top of this page was found. The diver beside it is My Clean Ocean founder Javier Mendoza, in Florida.

Why manatees crowd into springs every winter

Manatees have little body fat for their size and a slow metabolism, so cold water is dangerous for them. Below roughly 68°F, long exposure can cause cold stress, which weakens and can kill them. Each winter thousands move into natural springs, which stay around 72°F all year, and into the warm-water outflows of power plants.

That is why places like Crystal River and Blue Spring fill with manatees from November to March, and why protecting those springs, their flow and their water quality matters as much as protecting the animals themselves.

Seagrass, boats and a hard few years

An adult eats around 10 to 15 percent of its body weight in plants every day, mostly seagrass. When pollution and algae blooms wiped out much of the seagrass in Florida's Indian River Lagoon, manatees starved: Florida recorded more than 1,100 manatee deaths in 2021, a record, and the losses were declared an unusual mortality event.

Boat strikes are the leading human cause of manatee deaths, and many adults carry propeller scars that researchers use to identify them. Slow-speed zones, seagrass restoration and cleaner water are the tools that work. The species was moved from endangered to threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 2017; conservation groups have since asked for that protection to be restored, so check the current listing before quoting it.

How to watch a manatee the right way

Manatees are protected by federal law and by the Florida Manatee Sanctuary Act. The rule of thumb is passive observation: look, don't touch. Don't chase, feed or give water to a manatee, don't separate a mother and calf, and don't disturb one that is resting. If a manatee comes to you, stay still and let it decide. Crystal River is the only place in the United States where people may legally swim with wild manatees, and only under those rules.