Examine identifies boat strikes as a rising reason behind manatee deaths in Belize
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The endangered Antillean manatee faces a rising menace from boat strikes in Belize, in keeping with a brand new examine that raises considerations in regards to the survival of what had been thought of a comparatively wholesome inhabitants.
Belize hosts a inhabitants of round 1,000 manatees. With the expansion of tourism in latest a long time, nonetheless, Belize has seen a considerable improve in boat site visitors, making boat strikes an more and more essential reason behind manatee deaths and accidents.
The brand new examine, printed June 1 in Endangered Species Analysis, used 25 years of information on manatee strandings (useless or injured animals), six aerial surveys of the manatee inhabitants, and 20 years of boat registration knowledge to quantify the impacts of accelerating boat site visitors on the manatee inhabitants.
First writer Celeshia Man Galves, now on the Clearwater Marine Aquarium Analysis Institute in Belize, led the examine as a graduate scholar within the Coastal Science and Coverage Program at UC Santa Cruz.
“This work has been shared with policymakers in Belize and can contribute on to conservation planning, together with defending key areas for manatees such because the Belize River Mouth and the Placencia Lagoon,” Galves mentioned.
Galves discovered that with an increasing number of boats within the water, the variety of manatee strandings brought on by boat strikes has elevated over time, from 1 to 4 per 12 months within the late Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s to 10 to 17 per 12 months by the late 2010s. Strandings have been extra frequent in areas of excessive boat site visitors, excessive human inhabitants density, and mangrove habitats.
“We knew that boat strikes have been taking place, however this examine supplies sturdy quantitative proof of boat strikes as an rising supply of mortality for manatees in Belize, and it exhibits the areas the place the danger is biggest,” mentioned co-author Marm Kilpatrick, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz. “These findings present a foundation for conservation measures that may be carried out to cut back the danger.”
Conservation efforts ought to deal with lowering the variety of boats and their velocity inside zones of excessive manatee use, the authors mentioned. Excessive priorities for conservation interventions embody creating extra protected areas with restrictions on boat site visitors, together with areas designated for non-motorized boating or restricted entry, in addition to velocity restrictions in shallow seagrass habitats.
Just like the Florida manatee, the Antillean manatee is a subspecies of the West Indian manatee. Along with boat strikes, threats to the Antillean manatee inhabitants embody habitat degradation and loss, poaching, air pollution, and entanglement in fishing gear.
Celeshia Galves and her husband, co-author Jamal Galves, each work on manatee conservation on the Clearwater Marine Aquarium Analysis Institute in Belize, and Jamal Galvez is a 2023 graduate of the UCSC Coastal Science and Coverage Program. Different co-authors embody Nicole Auil Gomez on the Wildlife Conservation Society in Belize; Don Croll, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCSC; and Kelly Zilliacus, a analysis specialist in Croll’s Conservation Motion Lab at UCSC.
Extra info:
CG Galves et al, Rising mortality of endangered Antillean manatees Trichechus manatus manatus as a result of watercraft collisions in Belize, Endangered Species Analysis (2023). DOI: 10.3354/esr01247
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College of California – Santa Cruz
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Examine identifies boat strikes as a rising reason behind manatee deaths in Belize (2023, June 1)
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