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Manatee swims off with ropes
By BARBARA BEHRENDT © St. Petersburg Times, published January 13, 2001 CRYSTAL RIVER -- Some manatees like their personal space. Some like it a lot. This week, one of the endangered mammals decided to take some extra private area with him when he left the Banana Island sanctuary. The Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge received word Thursday afternoon that a part of the sanctuary marking was moving toward the Crystal River -- ropes, weights and all. Turns out, an exuberant manatee that had been playing with the marker ropes near the Kings Spring had gotten tangled in them. When the animal decided to move up river, he dragged the corner of the sanctuary marker with him. Sanctuaries are established throughout Kings Bay and the adjacent canal system from Nov. 15 through March 31 each year. The areas are closed to boaters, swimmers and divers and are set aside for manatees to rest and eat away from human activity. The call came from someone who witnessed the events. Officials have gotten calls about the buoys moving before. Sometimes people will tie to the markers and move them or the wind causes them to drift. But this was the first time that a manatee did the dismantling. "Fortunately some people saw it," said Jim Kraus, manager of the Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge. "I'm glad we have a lot of eyes and ears out there." If the animal had gotten tangled up at a time when no one was on the water, it could have been in danger from the lines. Every year manatees turn up with serious injuries because they get tangled in crab trap lines. The lines can tighten and even cost the animals flippers. Luckily, one of the people in Kings Bay Thursday was Bob Bonde, a researcher for the Sirenia Project of the U.S. Geological Survey. Bonde followed the animal up river and untangled the lines. Kraus said such a maneuver can be tricky. But for someone like Bonde, who has substantial experience with animals, the untangling operation wasn't difficult. "He's got a unique way with manatees. He knows how to move around them. But he's been swimming with them for so long," Kraus said. The animal was allowed to swim on its way since it was not injured. The operation left the sanctuary without a 30-foot section of the markings including a corner and devoid of one weight, which is about 35 or 40 pounds. Refuge staff including Bob Quarles put the pieces back together late Thursday. Quarles said he has never seen anything like the problem before and he was sorry that he hadn't seen what the manatee had gotten tangled up on before the animal was freed. That way he might have known better whether something in the sanctuary marking design was troublesome. He did say he believes someone might have left an extra rope tied up on the buoys from their boat and that might have contributed to the problem.
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