As the sun rises over the Blue Spring run during cold winter mornings, park rangers look into the water, counting the Florida manatees enjoying their makeshift hot tub. On January 21, 2024, a prolonged cold snap chilled the St. Johns River to the 50s, making herds of sea cows move into the warmer waters of the spring run.
Park rangers suspected they might witness a record-breaking spectacle due to hundreds of manatees densely clustered and floating atop one another. They doubled their efforts to guarantee precision, assigning two rangers to count along the run.
The final tally, a whopping 932 manatees, set a record and surpassed previous counts. This includes the 736 observed on New Year’s Day. The achievement is far from the single-day record of 49 manatees documented four decades ago. Additionally, it is twice the number recorded just a decade ago.
John Bengston, a federal wildlife ecologist in Alaska, stated, “Thrilling and nearly unbelievable!” Bengston vividly remembers when only 35 of these bewhiskered marine mammals were seen during a record-high single-day count in the spring run.
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Decades of dedicated conservation efforts, marked by legal battles and several meetings, bear fruit in the thriving manatee population of St. Johns. According to David Hankla, a retired U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service field office director, the numbers demonstrate the effectiveness of these hard-fought measures.
Hankla continued, “That’s what you’d expect for an animal not experiencing unnatural mortality. I suspect (the St.Johns) is one of the safer places to be for manatees.” Florida manatees coexist with a million registered vessels and nearly 22 million residents.
While the St. Johns River manatees thrive under protective measures, their counterparts elsewhere face significant dangers. In the Indian River Lagoon, along the state’s coast, over 1,000 died between 2020 and 2022.
This was due to many starving from the depletion of healthy seagrass caused by years of extensive algal blooms. Moreover, the dire situation is also a result of poor water quality. Notably, manatees on Florida’s southwest coast face high mortality rates.
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Here, they navigate through congested waters, red tide algal blooms, and water quality issues. Although federal officials downgraded the manatee’s status from endangered to threatened in 2017, they initiated a reevaluation last October.
The surge in manatee deaths between 2021 and 2022 made them reconsider whether they should be reclassified as endangered. Today, Blue Spring State Park sees a remarkable influx of approximately 700,000 annual visitors.
This is with over half of them choosing to explore the park’s wonders during winter. On the busiest days, visitors may find themself waiting for hours to enter the park. David Hankla emphasizes that the thriving numbers of manatees show the success of existing protective measures.
However, he cautions that a decline in water quality or quantity can pose a threat, pointing to the Indian River situation. For further manatee protection, Hankla suggests dismantling the Rodman Dam, situated approximately 46 miles north of Blue Spring on the Ocklawaha River.
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