Tired of the Florida cold, the manatees show up at the power plant

Manatees, suffering from cold temperatures in typically mild Florida, resort to hanging out in the warm discharge of the state’s power plants.

According to Art Associated Press report, manatees are piling up around the Florida Power & Light Company plant in Riviera Beach, where the company opened the manatee-oriented Manatee Lagoon attraction eight years ago. Thus, manatees find some salvation during a cool spell in the Sunshine State.

Manatees grow to about 10 feet long (3 meters) and weigh between 800 and 1,200 pounds (363 kilograms to 544 kilograms). They are native to the waters off Florida, which are generally warm.

But a polar vortex pummeled most of the United States last week, and cooler-than-average temperatures swept across Florida, making the usually warm home of manatees uncomfortably cold. Thus, the manatees headed for the warm—and most importantly, clean—water released from the power plant.

“Manatees are such a special species that we have in our waters here in Florida because they’re a sentinel species, which means they’re an indicator of any water problems we might have or any environmental problems we might have we have,” Rachel Shanker, education manager at Manatee Lagoon, told the AP. “They are the first animals to start responding to any changes in the environment.”

In the past few years, manatees in Florida have suffered mass starvation. Devastating loss of native seagrass, the species’ favorite food, has been caused by algal blooms. Endangered manatees — listed as endangered as of 2017 — have fallen into trouble across the state, and in 2021, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reported a record 1,100 manatee deaths.

The situation has become so extreme that in 2022 the state resorted to feeding the animals with heads of romaine lettuce. The following year, conservation groups announced their intention to sue the US Fish and Wildlife Services over the agency’s alleged failure to protect manatees.

“The manatees come here to Manatee Lagoon for that warm water, but we don’t have a large seagrass population right here on our property,” Shanker told the AP. “So they’ll come here to Manatee Lagoon to warm up, and then when they start to get hungry, they’ll travel to find these seagrass beds, and they’ll go feed until they’re full, and they get cold and they will go back to our warm water to warm themselves. According to Shanker, the plant uses ocean water to cool the plant, but otherwise doesn’t change it—in other words, it’s just warm ocean water.

The amount of seagrass along the Atlantic coast has recovered since its die-off, and the manatee population has increased accordingly; last year, the total manatee mortality (565 deaths) was “well below the five-year average (739),” according to Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

The population is still threatened, and Florida is are no strangers to natural disasters which may affect the animals’ habitat. But recent numbers show manatees on the rise, and that’s cause for celebration.