County a 'poster child' of manatee protection

Eighteen years after safe havens were proposed, fiery debate has moved from Citrus to across Florida in trying to strike a balance.

By BARBARA BEHRENDT, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published January 11, 2002

CRYSTAL RIVER -- Nowhere in Florida has the debate over manatee protection raged longer and hotter than in Citrus County.

It has been 18 years since the first manatee sanctuaries were proposed for Kings Bay, sparking the first wave of concerns about the future of manatees and the future of the community's multimillion-dollar tourist industry.

In 1993, the issue was reignited as federal officials expanded the sanctuary areas under pressure from a lawsuit filed by the National Audubon Society.

People from both sides of the manatee pendulum crowded into public meetings predicting doom. Add too many restrictions and the manatee tour business will die, some said. Add too few and it will be manatees themselves facing death, the opposing camp argued.

In the past year that same debate has exploded across Florida as, once again, a group of environmental agencies including the Save the Manatee Club sued the state and federal agencies responsible for manatee protection.

As those agencies grappled with settlements, public meetings from one end of the state to the other erupted in emotional debates about manatees, boating and the future of what makes Florida a special tourist destination and an attractive place to call home.

The old predictions of doom and gloom seem to have not come true locally with both dive shop business and manatee numbers booming since the last sanctuary expansions. Still, Citrus County hasn't escaped the statewide debate.

Citrus still has the only federally established manatee sanctuaries in the state. Yet there has been consensus by state and federal officials that the manatees in the Blue Waters of the Homosassa River need some protection, too.

Officials at the Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park, which is adjacent to the area, have been part of that discussion. Meanwhile, they have also been active in expanding their own facilities to benefit manatees in the future.

"Citrus County is the poster child of what to do to protect manatees," said Helen Spivey, co-chairwoman of the Save the Manatee Club and a longtime Citrus County manatee booster.

But even Citrus needs to be thinking about the same sorts of issues as the rest of the state as it acts to safeguard the endangered animals, she said. Not only are regulations needed such as sanctuaries and speed zones, but communities also have to be willing to protect important manatee habitat.

"We need to have a place for them to live," Spivey said. "Manatees are going to be homeless. They're just not going to have the kind of habitat to reproduce."

Protecting the habitat in Citrus County has long been an issue, but the more direct effects of humans on manatees has really been the focus of local manatee protectors in recent months.

Several weeks ago, state officials installed signs at the Homosassa Blue Waters urging people to not disturb resting manatees in the area. While local dive shops, fishermen and boaters have complained that manatee sanctuaries in the area are unnecessary because manatees don't die at the Blue Waters, manatee protectors say harassment and not death is the real issue in that area.

In the Crystal River, manatees can flock into their familiar sanctuaries if they need rest or simply want to get away from the many divers who often frequent the waters in winter. In Homosassa, the Blue Waters is the only warm-water refuge and manatees need warm water when gulf temperatures drop.

Since they have gathered in increasing numbers in recent years, local dive and tour businesses have moved in as well. They frequently arrive early in the mornings dropping off boatloads of snorkelers.

Those visitors are usually told the rules about manatee interaction. But officials maintain that even the most well-intentioned wildlife watcher can step over the line. Sheer numbers of people in the water can disturb the manatees which then swim away into colder and more unhealthy areas.

Videotaped footage of activities in the area have shown that the swimmers do sometimes harass manatees and drive them from their warm water resting areas.

Both state and federal agencies have floated ideas about how to configure manatee sanctuaries in the area. But neither was able to take action by the start of this winter season and therefore the state decided to seek the voluntary "do not disturb" area signs.

Opinions are mixed about whether the signs will work.

Manatee watch volunteers, who work through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to patrol area waters and inform people of the manatee interaction rules, have reported that some people will not be dissuaded from doing whatever they want with manatees regardless of the warnings.

"It's pretty hard to rely on people's willingness to restrain themselves," said Jim Kraus, manager of the Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge.

He believes that the final solution at the Blue Waters has to be a sanctuary like the ones in Kings Bay. There, buoys mark off sections of water where manatees can eat or rest. No humans or boats are allowed in the zone.

"I think this area is the best model of how to do it right and it needs to be applied to other parts of the state," Kraus said.

For years speed limits, sanctuaries and the county Manatee Protection Plan have been in place to keep harmful effects on the endangered animals to a minimum. Not only have manatees learned to seek out their safe havens, ducking into the sanctuaries whenever the crush of boats and people gets too great, but people have also adjusted.

"The people know what's there. They know when it's going to kick in. People around here have gotten used to it," Kraus said. "It's an established fact. They adapt to it and adjust to it and the manatees do too."

While manatee harassment is the issue at the Blue Waters, there are other hazards faced by manatees. Several times a year, Kraus and the rest of the local manatee rescue team must respond to cases where animals are sick or injured.

Just across a shallow cove from the Blue Waters is the long-river bridge and Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park. There a captive herd of manatees has been under quarantine for the past several years as veterinarians and scientists try to figure out why they have a lesion-producing virus, the first ever seen in manatees.

To help the park deal with the treatment of the animals and any other medical issues that might come along for the captives and wild manatees in the future, the state has funded the development of two different pools at the park.

A handling pool is currently under construction, although the project has run into some delays. The job is complicated because of its nearness to the river and the high water table, according to Tom Linley, park manager.

When the work is done, park officials will be able to herd a manatee in the Fishbowl area into a channel which will lead to this handling pool. A gate will be closed behind and they will be able to drain the water out like a giant bathtub.

Handlers will then be able to draw blood, perform medical procedures or any other kinds of treatments without having to net the manatees and drag them onto dry ground, which has been the method up until now.

"It's going to be a lot less stressful for the manatees than it's been in the past. . . . They're not going to be handled by 20 people surrounding them with nets," he said.

Linley said he hopes the handling pool, which is expected to cost about $220,000, will be ready by midyear.

The second pool planned for the park will be an isolation pool, which now is in the early design phase. The pool will be larger than the handling pool and slightly above ground. Instead of using river water, it will have a closed system with filters and will create an isolated environment for the manatees. The pool will be used to help treat the virus problem in the animals, which some have thought might be related to water temperature or other conditions in the spring run where the animals have been living.

The park currently has nine female manatees, and there are discussions of taking six of those to Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute near Fort Pierce, which is also studying the virus in manatees. Three would remain in the park.

The design phase alone for each of the pools will cost about $55,000 per pool and the construction cost on the isolation pool has not yet been calculated.

The work will eventually allow the park to be a "first aid station," which could provide a first stopping point for injured and ill wild manatees before they are moved to another facility.

"We are not going to be a manatee hospital," Linley said. "But we can help if it's short term, from a couple of days to a couple of weeks."

There have also been discussions about opening a large portion of the spring run up to the wild manatees sometime in the future. Linley said those discussions continue but nothing is decided. But first, the issue of the virus must be solved. So must the issue of the shallowness of the entry point to the park from the river.

A dredging project is planned which will deepen the water between the Blue Waters and the park. That dredging is expected to begin in two to three years.

Regardless of what happens with the captive and wild manatees in the area, Linley said it is important that park visitors always have a chance to see the creatures and learn something about them. "A great deal of education happens here with the manatees at Homosassa," he said.

Kraus said education is the key to what will happen with the future of the species. And so is understanding. He said there will always be competing interests when it comes to protection of manatees. "So far, I think we've struck a pretty good balance here," he said. "It's not perfect, but we do not have a lot of deaths."

He said that he expects interest in swimming and diving with manatees to increase in the same way interest in moving to Florida is increasing. Kraus said he believes the experience of swimming beside a manatee is already changing, and not necessarily in a good way, as it has become more popular.

Now there are more boats, more snorkelers vying for a good manatee experience in a limited space.

"It's evolving," he said. "This is an area where there is an economic interest in this. And I think we are in a sense moving down the road already. . . . But you do have to wonder how far you go down that road."

Kraus said that erring on the side of caution is really the only route to take, especially when dealing with such an important resource as the manatee and such a unique habitat that the manatee calls home.

"We really do have something special here, and we all get to get together and make sure we keep it," Kraus said. "What we have here is really a treasure. Now what are we going to do about it?"

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