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Dolphin Watch
Talk about slow and easy
By ANN WEAVER
Article published on Thursday, May 8, 2008
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![[Image]](/content_images/050808_out-01.jpg) |
| Photo by ANN WEAVER |
| This venerable old veteran lies along the side of a mother manatee, resting his head, with a giant flipper over her back. |
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Recently when I was on the water surveying for dolphins, a man on a boat said there was a dead mama manatee with its baby clinging to it. Mom was hit by a boat, he shouted through cupped hands.
Lovely. I tapped into the stranding network, making phone calls from the boat. But guess who got elected, by default, to go find the corpse and inconsolable calf. Right.
I found them under a bridge in a very long narrow channel of the Intercoastal Waterway.
They looked like logs at the surface. But they were more like icebergs: Most of the story was hidden. It was impossible to see how many there were.
Two men in a shallow johnboat hovered over them, petting them. I hit the horn. They backed off instantly. They must’ve known they were wrong to pet manatees.
Manatees are endangered. That means two things. One, you stay 100 yards from them. Two, if we don’t STOP the way we’re handling them, they WILL go extinct. Our choice.
It’s such a pity. It’s a pity I had to honk. Manatees will let you pet them. It’s something in their exotic social psychology: up to a ton of open-mindedness! They’re the only free-ranging mammals I can think of who aren’t afraid of people. That makes them our last connection to the Garden of Eden. It’s a pity we can’t see that.
It’s a pity not everyone could pet a manatee. The connection would be forged. People would know what they were protecting. It would probably make our waterways safer.
It’s a pity that the manatees are in such danger because some people’s idea of Eden is going as fast as they damn well please in boats regardless of anybody else (other animals, other boats) or buying boats with a design that makes it impossible for boat captains to see what or who is at the bow.
I settled in to watch a two-hour special on ManateeVee and made innumerable phone calls to Donna Szemer of the Florida Wildlife Commission Marine Mammal Pathology Lab. I know dolphins, I told her, but not manatees. I think you better come out here.
Ok, we can do that. But first, is the mom dead or alive, she asked. Donna had the difficult job of walking me through a manatee observation. She would try valiantly to help me help her decide if the manatee mom was wounded, dead or in an orgy. Evidently, manatee sex can resemble coma!
Dead or alive is usually a simple question. If you have heart troubles, go watch manatees. They move so languidly, so smoothly, so beautifully, they reduce blood pressure like no other.
It took a surprisingly long time to decide that there were three manatees there - two adults and a calf. Two were nudging and hugging and holding the third between them, Mom. And they stayed at the surface! I wish I knew how common that behavior was.
Mom didn’t move. I could see the parallel glare of boat propeller slashes on her hips. Of great girth, she lay facedown in the water. I waited for her to breathe.
The other adult, Lover, must have been an old veteran indeed. From skull to hips, he was covered with growth like someone wove a mosaic of little white round shells, filled the crannies with moss and draped it over Lover like a king’s cape. He even wore a crown of shells.
He clung to Mom like life itself. He usually lay along her side, resting his head on her, with a giant flipper over her back. You could see his shoulder as he slung his arm around her.
The light-gray calf was an older calf. Its belly was covered with white slashes: Calf knew the sharp shells hidden among sea grass meadows. Like Lover, Calf hovered around Mom, moving along her body and stroking with that mushy mug-of-a-face.
Is the calf nursing? Donna asked. The teats are under the armpits [as they are in a surprising number of species]. No. Calf is not nursing.
Since dolphins may prop up injured dolphins, I watched for a long time trying to decide if Lover and Calf seemed to be propping Mom up. Both Lover and Calf were constantly next, over, under and around her. But all this happened at such a slow speed, it was like trying to understand a speech played very slowly. You get the idea.
Lover rested his head on Mom’s back a lot. If it had been dolphins, I would’ve called it a mount attempt (in most other species you can tell it’s a mount and don’t have to equivocate). That’s when Calf would nudge Lover. Mammal kids of all kinds are interested in adult sex. Chimp kids will actually wedge themselves between mom and whomever (even jumping on whomever’s back!) to make them go away. It’s quite possible that Calf was competing with Lover for Mom’s attention in a slow-motion sort of way.
Mom lifted her head and breathed deeply. Alive!
For a second it looked like seaside necrophilia, I reported to Donna, but the mom is alive. Okay, Donna said, now there are three things to look for: Is the mom bloated? What are the propeller wounds like? Can the mom dive?
Was Mom bloated? When manatees get hit by boat propellers, propellers slice tissues. This can release the right gases into the wrong places. The poor things bloat. Then they can’t dive. Can’t dive? Can’t eat. Die. Slowly. I’ve seen the bloat at the Lowery Park Zoo Manatee Hospital.
But I had to get closer. It was really hard. All I know about manatees is the boat-injury side. It was incredibly hard psychologically to pull close enough to make the detailed observations Donna needed. If Mom was dying, I guess it didn’t matter. But if she was trying to recover from a boat hit, I’m sure a close boat would scare her.
Mom was at least a yard wide. Once at the San Diego Zoo, a keeper asked me whether I thought a takin (tah’ kin) was pregnant. Takins are hoofed animals from Tibet to southern China. They live in mountainous forests at high altitude and have thick shaggy coats to protect them from the cold. All of ours looked pregnant all the time. Telling whether a takin was pregnant like telling whether Mom manatee was bloated. I know what you mean, Donna, but I couldn’t tell ya.
Ok, tell me what the wounds look like.
The manatees floated on the surface, drifting as easily on the tidal current as Huck Finn’s raft. Only Lover and Calf showed languid movement. Stretched out to her full length, Mom got hugs and strokes as she slowly floated north but hadn’t moved except to breathe and once nuzzle Calf. I drifted back and forth in their proximity. All three of the manatees had the pink scars of boat propeller meetings.
Mom has four scars, parallel, pink, wide. Where on the body? Lower back. How deep are the openings? Uh, closed, I think. Yes, the wounds are closed. The scars must be older but they’re very wide and very pink.
Propeller marks stay pink for a long time, Donna said, so maybe they’re old. Most important: Can she dive? Can you find out for us, Ann? It would help us out so much.
Sigh. Ok. She hasn’t dove yet. What do you suggest?
Can you touch her with something, a pole or something?
I choked. That goes against everything I’ve ever heard! Okay. Me, the pole and the manatees were finally in the right place. I touched Mom’s back with the pole. Whoooosh! Boy, could she dive!
It took two hours of watching, reporting and being guided to determine that Mom was probably in a sexual daze from an on-going manatee orgy rather than dying. Manatee sex can be like that, Donna said laconically.
It’s the happy ending!
Postscript: Bedroom seas are about to turn into nursery seas. Please drive your watercraft with respect.
Hurt Marine Mammals?
Clearwater Marine Aquarium Stranding Network Diane Young 727-441-1790, ext 234.
Florida Wildlife Commission 24-hr Hotline 1-888-404-3922.
Dr. Weaver studies wild dolphins under federal permit GA1088-1815, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Send her an e-mail at acweaver@tampabay.rr.com or visit www.dazzlingdolphins.com.
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Article published on Thursday, May 8, 2008
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