The Crystal River Manatees
January 25, 2024
The weather kept WW at the dock in Steinhatchee for a few days. This year’s unusually extreme El Niño has done its best to keep me in northern Florida. I’m about 3 weeks behind schedule, but out here on the water a schedule is more like a guideline. On a cold, dark morning with a Small Craft Advisory about to lift, I set out with some uncertainty in a small flotilla of Looper boats headed for Crystal River, FL. The ride would be another bathtub adventure concurred Captain Kim, but these weather openings have been both less-than-perfect and rare this winter. The ride was indeed rough in the beginning and the boats that decided to sit this one out were wise to wait. The waves were from the NE switching to E at about 3’ high on 3 seconds, port astern (on my left butt), and then port beam (directly on my left side). That settled down in a few hours as we approached Cedar Key. Three of us chose not to cross the shallows of the Seahorse Reef because the wave heights were still about 2’, the chart showed depths of 7’, and we had no local knowledge of the tide effects. The safest option was out and around the Seahorse Reef Light even though it added 15 NM, including the 8 NM run back towards the entrance to Crystal River in 3-4’ waves just off the nose. The day was a bouncy, splashy ride, but we were glad to have made the run.
Our big adventure on that trip was the Loon-a-Sea blowing an exhaust cooling hose in one engine. They were forced to a stop in those 2-3’ seas with the Calle-B holding station and WW slowed to a holding pattern. Captain Jay used some miracle tape, a.k.a. Flex Tape, to get the leak under control, but not before lots of rocking and rolling induced uncertainty onboard and a few burns to his arms. I grabbed two roles of that tape when they resupplied in Crystal River. Every day on the water brings a new challenge and you do your best to be prepared.
The final leg into Crystal River was not easy. There is about 10 NM of 6-10’ deep open waters with a final 5 NM run into the river restricted to a narrow <75 m wide channel navigated by buoy markers and your chart. The channel was often 6’ deep and required a near miss of the northern tip of Shell Island to sustain 4’ of depth as you entered the sheltered river section. The final run into the harbour was also navigation by markers and your charts that were performing more like guidelines than gospel. These inshore Florida waters are developing my nerves of steel.
My plan for Crystal River was a visit with the local population of West Indian Manatee. As I tied up to the dock, I was greeted with my first encounter with a manatee as she swam alongside WW. There was a steady stream of tour boats and kayak tours heading to the different manatee springs. The tours begin at 0730 hrs and the convoys hit their peak by 1000 hrs, persisting until sunset. The next day I was in my shorty wet suit and dinghy headed to the first spring before 0800 hrs.
I was still motoring my little 4 HP outboard when the first Manatee appeared. I was caught off-guard by the massive creature, bigger than the 3 m dinghy, that skedaddled quickly as I unknowingly pulled alongside in <2 m of water. That spooked me on motor operations near to the springs and I headed back out into the safer harbour. I next headed over to the Three Sisters Spring. The manatee was once officially endangered and now threatened, but being revisited for a threatened status. They congregate in the springs when the Gulf water temperatures drop below 20oC (68oF) – the Three Sister Springs remain about 22oC (72oF) year-round. There can be hundreds of adults, juveniles, and mothers with calves jammed in this small space in the winter months, with more manatees in several other springs around Kings Bay.
Three Sisters Spring is located down a canal lined with homes and boats. I motored as far as I considered safe, then rowed the last 800 m. Once tied up to shore, I jumped in and was shortly surrounded by manatees in the near crystal-clear waters of the springs that attract them to this special place. For the next 30 minutes, I held my station in <2 m of water and the manatees swam beside and under me as they moved into resting places in the springs along the shore that were roped off to keep humans out. The animals appeared ambivalent to my presence and the few other people in the water, brushing by you gracefully as they found their warm spots. Being up close and personal with these majestic, wild creatures was truly amazing and I thanked them for the brief visit and wished them well.
Then came the human hoards. They came by kayak, paddleboard, and motorboats of all sizes. This included full, pontoon tour boats with big outboard engines moving far too fast for these narrow, shallow canals filled with manatees steadily moving in and out. As I rowed out of the canal, there were 100 people in the water, 25+ kayaks, 5 tour boats, several power boats, and more boats coming into the spring area which is about the size of your local public swimming pool. For the remaining daylight hours, that was the obstacle course and peaceless resting place for the manatees seeking their thermal refuge.
The humans are kept away from the resting place by the roped enclosure in the water and a walkway with fences on land. I am not sure about the impact of so many humans in the water every day, but the powerboats are an issue of extreme concern sadly expressed on the backs of some animals. Boat strikes are one of their most serious threats, so watching the power boats travel fast under power in the canal where many manatees are within a few meters of the boat was mind-boggling. I asked the US Fish and Wildlife staff person on-site in a kayak about this incongruity: “…well sir, there shouldn’t be any power boats in here but this is Florida and we have a very strong boating lobby…”. You can read more about the struggle between conservationists and boaters here, but be aware that the video will be too disturbing for many of you. Politics aside, boat motors hurt and kill manatees.
Adding more motor power boats in these canals which already have homes with boats is simply crazy, and frankly wouldn’t be acceptable in most jurisdictions north of the Mason-Dixon Line. That north-south demarcation is often cited as the US Civil War-era separation between the southern slave and northern non-slave states, but the separation is better identified in this map. Why does boating in the canals persist? Restricting boats would result in the suppression of the free market and its capitalist approach in the land of the free in a region where many still embrace their southern “rebel” moniker, regardless of its misguided application. These markets for motorboating and touring lack appropriate budget lines for their environmental costs, e.g., protecting manatees, and as I have argued previously, aren’t functioning in a truly free market.
What about all the people in the water, or in kayaks and on boards? I doubt that these non-power boats are a direct issue for the animals beyond the nuisance of too many crowding the surface waters. People in the water create a crowding issue too, plus people tend to ignore rules such as don’t touch, poke, prod, or physically disturb these animals. These issues are “people management” that can be easily addressed, e.g., restricting numbers and enforcing rules, which takes government intervention and investment that may indeed happen. It will be a struggle for the regulators because boating is believed to contribute $30B a year to Florida’s economy.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service was releasing a once-captive individual the day I visited. I’m pondering (see also https://www.weavingwatersexpedition.com/news/pickwick-lake-to-chattanooga) and will come back to the question of keeping large marine mammals in aquariums. The staff person on site explained that released individuals were also tracked because some don’t adjust to their rewilding and require additional rehabilitation. I saw a manatee dragging its volleyball-sized transmitter at the surface which I thought was an entangled, crab pot buoy. I have tracked and tagged 1,000s of fish of all sizes and insects a few cm in length, so I was a bit shocked to see the huge tag strapped to its fluke given the modern technologies that are far less intrusive. Another pending question for those people thinking about manatees every day.
My economist colleagues will challenge my simplification of free markets, capitalism, laissez-faire economics, free-market socialism, etc., but I am working on learning more. I have no issues with the fundamental concepts; people should be free to work hard and earn a good living for themselves and their families. At issue is the false markets we still create because budgets fail to address the real and full environmental and social costs of doing business. Even more intolerable are the facades created by the allure of “cheap” products when governments subsidize the private sector, which is a bright red flag for devalued production costs and environmental degradation. There are simple, old-time adages we should bring back into our lives: nothing in life is free, and beware the deals that are too good to be true. I have worked with big and small corporations my entire career. To a person, corporate leaders are very successful because they find profitable solutions to challenges, and therefore they succeed when given any sound environmental regulation or policy. If some can’t profit, then the free-market ideal prevails.
The manatee situation demonstrates the crux of the environmental challenge we have created, and which undermines our survival on this planet. Our ambivalence about the manatee’s welfare reflects the broader ignorance of natural environments and the reality of human existence within these systems. The false free markets that lack true environmental costs that we continue to sustain have resulted in the Western world’s laziness and complacency about our survival as a species, and with the less-developed world clamoring to be just like us. As Rachel Carson pointed out, we let the market system off the hook by ignoring the real environmental costs of doing business, and that false capitalization is slowly eliminating human habitats and the ecosystem resources we need to survive. When natural ecosystems around us are in peril, e.g., we endanger species like manatees, we are equally at risk, despite what the internet-evolved culture of denialism tells you (believing them is another example of our indolence). We need to realize and accept the critical need for us to put humans back into the planet’s ecosystem model if we want to correct the global environmental disaster we created and are perpetuating. The Weaving Waters Expedition is my effort to explain our real history and current environmental challenges through the lens of the water world, while demonstrating that opportunities exist to overcome our digressions.
A few colleagues couldn’t make planned visits to Crystal River (covid is still out there), so I headed off to explore the barrier islands of western Florida.
Allen
St. Pete’s, FL
