Marine biologists, environmentalists sound the alarm, call northern end of Indian River Lagoon a death trap for manatees

By Jordan Segundo, Rubén Rosario

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    FLORIDA (WSVN) — A Florida lagoon that was once considered a paradise for the state’s manatees has become a death trap, and environmentalists said it’s a result of pollution.

The Indian River Lagoon, stretching from Palm Beach County to Daytona Beach, is where manatees come for warm water.

But in recent years, scientists said, the northern end of the lagoon has been a death trap.

“All of these homes along the lagoon, that are on septic tanks, are slowly leaking, literally, tons of nitrogen and phosphorus into the system,” said marine biologist Peter Barile.

Barile, who has studied manatees for decades, said the pollutants released by septic tanks and water treatment facilities along the lagoon are fueling algae growth in the water, causing the manatees’ main food source, seagrass, to die.

“So, this algae is reducing light down to the seagrasses, essentially smothering them and killing them,” he said.

Barile said manatees need to eat nearly 100 pounds of vegetation a day, and with the sea grass gone, they have little choice but to eat the toxic algae that killed it, causing their normally round bodies to become flat and emaciated.

Katrina Shadix, executive director of the nonprofit Bear Warriors United, sued the Florida Department of Environmental Protection in 2022 to help protect the manatees.

“They suffered immensely, and for a very long time,” she said. “When a manatee starves to death, it’s an extremely painful process. Basically, their insides melt and turn to liquid.”

Pictures provided by Bear Warriors United show how desperate some of the manatees were, as they attempted to pull themselves out of the water to eat leaves off dry land or grass along the water’s edge.

“There was a carcass of a mom, and the skeleton had started to show, and there was a baby skeleton inside of her body,” said Shadix, “so she died pregnant, and the bones of the baby were fitted perfectly inside the bones of the mother.”

In April, a federal judge ruled in favor of Bear Warriors United, finding Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection was “in violation of the Endangered Species Act.”

The judge ruled, “There is a definitive causal link” between Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection wastewater regulations and the ongoing risk to manatees.

Shadix said she is now hopeful the manatee population will come back.

“I was convinced that this home herd was going to go extinct and that the rest of the state’s manatee would follow, but now that we won this lawsuit, we think we have a really good chance of working with the state to make sure the manatees don’t go extinct on our watch,” she said.

The federal judge in this case has allowed Bear Warriors United to lay out the changes it wants the state to make in order to protect manatees. Some of those requests include a supplemental feeding program for the manatees and for the state to stop construction of development with on-site sewage.

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