Grassy Key, FL… Dolphin Research Center’s Manatee Rescue Team and manatee personnel from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission teamed up on Sunday, October 2nd to rescue twin manatee calves in the Hammer Point area, Bayside, Tavernier. The baby animals, a male and female, were scooped up in a net, brought to shore and transported by the FWC to Miami Seaquarium for rehabilitation. Sadly, the youngsters were orphaned after their mother, a well-known Florida Keys manatee known as Bonnie, was found dead the evening before. The FWC received reports of a dead manatee from area residents and asked DRC to confirm. An assessor went on scene and secured Bonnie’s remains after dark. The rescue mission launched early Sunday morning to locate and save her babies.
The small manatees were born on May 11, 2016. At this young age, they were still nursing from their mother and will need to receive nutrition and additional care at MSQ. While manatee calves may typically remain with their mothers for one to two years, they are often eating on their own at the end of their first year of life. Manatees are herbivores whose regular diet includes sea grass, sea lettuce and other kinds of vegetation. If they thrive and grow, there is every hope that, eventually, the siblings will be released back into the Florida Keys waters. “Unlike many other marine mammals, manatees do not rely on a group social structure. Their food source is accessible all around them and they do not have natural predators,” explains DRC Medical Director Pat Clough. “When these babies grow up enough, we hope that they will be able to do quite well but will need to be carefully monitored to ensure a successful transition to their wild environment.”
For the rescue team, the mission was bittersweet, due to their long history with Bonnie, whom they first got to know more than 20 years ago when one of her pectoral flippers became severely entangled with monofilament fishing line. Over the years, she was assisted multiple times for entanglement issues. At one point the injury to her flipper was so advanced that it necessitated a partial amputation. After several months of rehabilitation at Miami Seaquarium, she was released. Scar tissue on both of her flippers made her prone to re-entangle and require additional help from manatee rescue teams. Through it all, however, she continued to live the Florida Keys life and gave birth to five offspring over the years. It is presumed that her death was caused by a boat strike. A necropsy will be conducted to hopefully confirm the cause of death. If it is determined, Bonnie will be the ninth manatee fatality from a watercraft collision in Monroe County in 2016.
“A long time manatee friend passed this weekend. We are saddened by her death but happy that we were able to honor her by rescuing her children,” said Dolphin Research Center Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer Mandy Rodriguez.
Founded in 1984, Dolphin Research Center is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the peaceful coexistence between marine mammals, humans and the environment we share. Home to a family of dolphins and sea lions, DRC is open daily to the public for educational programs and interactive experiences. DRC is licensed by the federal government to assess, rescue, transport and temporarily house injured manatees. For more information visit www.dolphins.org.
