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Massive switch for manatees

Three Florida female animals join a multiagency effort in Ohio to study a disease that has plagued captives as three male manatees leave Ohio for Florida.

By BARBARA BEHRENDT and JORGE SANCHEZ
Published October 10, 2005

	[Times photo: Max Bittle]
	Volunteer Francois Fournier waits Saturday with Holly the manatee at the Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park in Homosassa before Holly is shipped Sunday morning to the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Ohio. Two other female manatees, Willoughby and Stubby, accompanied her. They are now a part of the zoo's "Manatee Coast" exhibit.

HOMOSASSA - Three Florida manatees found themselves in a very different place when the sun rose Sunday morning.

Willoughby and Holly, from the Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park, and Stubby, from SeaWorld Orlando, started their day hundreds of miles from their native waters.

They were in the 23,000-square-foot, quarter-of-a-million-gallon tank at the "Manatee Coast" exhibit at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Ohio.

The three made the trip without any complications, according to Art Yerian, manager of the Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park and one of several staffers who accompanied the manatees. The manatees were loaded onto a cargo plane and flew out of the Orlando airport at 1 a.m. Sunday. They landed in Columbus about 5:30 Sunday morning.

"Everything went just as planned," Yerian said. "They were unloaded about 7 or 8 a.m."

Yerian said the three manatees were hanging out in part of the zoo's "Manatee Coast" exhibit that leads to the main tank. He said the manatees would occasionally venture into the main tank, seemingly to explore their new surroundings.

"Willoughby started eating within the first five minutes. Holly's doing great," Yerian said Sunday, speaking on a cell phone while actually observing the manatees.

At the Columbus Zoo, they will become part of a multiagency effort to resolve the question of the papillomavirus, which has been infecting captive manatees in Florida recovery and rehabilitation facilities for eight years.

The manatee move was a massive logistical operation that began Friday, when the Columbus Zoo staff captured and transported their three male manatees, Gene, Dundee and Turtle, in foam-lined boxes via truck and then cargo plane from Port Columbus to Orlando.

From there, Dundee and Turtle were bound for Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa and SeaWorld to prepare them for release into the wild late this year or early next year.

Gene was sent to Lowry Park, as well, but is not slated for release at this time.

The move of the three Columbus male manatees from the zoo's exhibit made room for the three Florida female manatees.

All parks that house manatees either have all males or all females, because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service does not permit captive breeding of the endangered manatees. This the first time that Columbus will house only female manatees.

The three females were collected Saturday night using cranes and floodlights brought in for the operation at the Homosassa Springs State Wildlife Park and SeaWorld.

While central Ohio may seem an odd place for manatees and manatee research, Doug Warmolts, Columbus aquarium curator, said there are strong ties between manatees and the zoo.

In the mid 1990s, Jim Kraus was manatee coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and educational animal show host Jack Hanna, the zoo's director emeritus, was in Florida doing a special on manatees.

Kraus, now manager of the Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge, and Hanna started talking about the number of animals that were coming into the manatee recovery program and how the animals needed more space than was available in Florida marine parks.

That idea grew into the "Manatee Coast" exhibit, which, with its massive retractable roof that will keep the manatees away from the wintry Ohio elements during part of the year, opened to visitors in 1999.

Gene and Dundee were two of the original manatees in that exhibit.

The "Manatee Coast" exhibit was always meant to be a part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's manatee recovery and rehabilitation efforts and so, Warmolts said, its involvement in trying to understand the papillomavirus makes sense.

"Our position is like Homosassa. We're interested in helping the program by doing the best that we can," said Warmolts, who has been at the zoo for 17 years. "We're looking forward to it."

While the Florida manatees are at the Columbus Zoo, animal care staff will make changes in the environmental conditions of their tank, altering water temperature and salinity. Some manatee experts have surmised that the captive manatees, such as those at the Homosassa Springs park, have exhibited the virus because they never leave the spring run, which is largely fresh, cold water.

Wild manatees swim from fresh to salt water and from warmer to cooler waters throughout their migrations.

"The virus is probably present in the manatee population but it may be expressing itself due to the temperatures," Warmolts said. "Springs such as Homosassa and Crystal River are vital to these populations during the winter, but then they migrate back out into the coastal areas."

Although the springs do provide needed warm waters in the winter compared to the much cooler winter gulf temperatures, "those temperatures may not be what's good all year. They may have produced long-term stress," he said. "That lowers the immune system."

With Willoughby and Holly in Ohio, Homosassa park officials plan to make a series of improvements to the aboveground pool where they have been living the last couple of months. A third manatee that had been slated to be part of the group going to Columbus, Oakley, was sent instead from Homosassa to Lowry Park Zoo several weeks ago when she developed some medical problems.

State park officials said late last week that Oakley continues to be monitored and treated and there has been no change in her condition.

Once the aboveground pool improvements are made, several other Homosassa manatees will be moved from the spring run where they currently live into the holding pond. They will then become part of another segment of the investigation into the virus. They will be treated with a new vaccine developed by the Fort Pierce-based Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution.

The remaining animals in the spring run will serve as a control group for the experiment and will receive no special treatments.

The ultimate goal is to find out whether the virus poses a threat that could seriously harm manatees that have it or manatees they may come in contact with. If there is no serious threat, then the eight-year quarantine, which has kept Homosassa from releasing manatees into the wild and accepting new manatees into the park, can end.

"We were never meant to be a nursing home," said Art Yerian, Homosassa park manager. "We were never meant to keep manatees here for 10 to 12 years."

In addition to treating the animals that have already exhibited the virus, Yerian said that wild manatees will also be tested during the winter so that everyone will know whether the virus already exists in the wild. That could have an impact on whether or when the captive animals are released.

"If it is discovered in the wild population, then that's that," Yerian said.

Manatee recovery officials are always pushing to get every adult manatee in captivity back into the wild, where it can reproduce and help bolster the wild population. But Yerian said that he does not believe the day will ever come that the Homosassa park won't have some manatees. Rosie, for example, who has lived at the park longer than any of the other manatees, will always be in captivity.

While Homosassa has partnered with the Columbus Zoo for the manatee move project, a similar trade of animals between the Cincinnati Zoo and other Florida facilities with manatees that have the virus has also been done.

"The ultimate goal is to understand the significance of the papillomavirus," Warmolts said. "And can we make it go away?"

Warmolts said he does not believe that answer will come quickly. In fact, it may take years. And once all the data is analyzed, those whose job it is to keep the manatee population healthy will have to make informed decisions about what to do next.

"Hopefully, it will allow Homosassa eventually to be able to return to its original goals in the program," which was to provide another area where recovering manatees could be prepared to be released again into the wild, Warmolts said.

Warmolts said he expects good communications and coordination between his facility and Yerian's in the months ahead. As they prepared for the move, Columbus and Homosassa representatives visited each facility and began to build a partnership.

"I think we're eager to make that link," Warmolts said. "You have a very active and caring group in Homosassa. I can tell you that we've got a group equally dedicated with people on this end."

Warmolts admitted that saying goodbye to manatees he has cared for since they arrived six years ago was a downside of his work. Knowing that one of the manatees that had previously lived in Columbus, Comet, was returned to the wild and was later badly injured by a boat and died, makes the whole process a bittersweet one.

"It's not without apprehension that the program releases these guys," he said. "You can't help but make a personal connection to these animals."

Still, the arrival and departure of animals is what the rehabilitation process was all about.

"We knew it was coming, I think, from the beginning. The animals coming here was just a temporary thing," he said. "We'll miss them, but at the same time, having females is something new to us and we're looking forward to that."

For more information on the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, visit www.colszoo.org/ and for information on the Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park visit www.citrusdirectory.com/hsswp/index.html

--Barbara Behrendt can be reached at 564-3621 or behrendt@sptimes.com --Jorge Sanchez can be reached at 860-7313 or sanchez@sptimes.com

[Last modified October 10, 2005, 01:18:12]