Florida’s state marine mammal, the manatee, is falling prey to plastics | Oceana USA
Affectionately known as “sea cows,” manatees are a treasured sight along Florida’s coastline. These slow-moving, gentle giants can weigh up to 1,200 pounds, subsisting solely on a vegetarian spread of seagrass and algae. But their diets too often include something that doesn’t belong – plastic.
Oceana reviewed nearly 1,800 documented cases of plastic consumption and entanglement among marine animals in U.S. waters from 2009 to early 2020 and discovered that manatees, along with turtles, were disproportionately represented. Turtles comprised 48% of all cases, while manatees comprised 39%.
At least 700 Florida manatees fell prey to plastics over that period, and nearly all of them (99%) had swallowed some type of plastic. This extra threat is one that Florida manatees, a species threatened with extinction, cannot afford. They are already vulnerable to ship strikes and fishing gear entanglements (which were not included in Oceana’s report), and humans are responsible for about half of all manatee deaths where the cause is known.
The new report from Oceana, titled “Choked, Strangled, Drowned: The Plastics Crisis Unfolding in Our Oceans,” highlights the existential threat that plastic poses. Most of these cases (88%) involved animals that were listed as either endangered or threatened with extinction under the Endangered Species Act. And in some cases, a single piece of plastic proved fatal.
