Saturday, October 31, 2009
Ilya gets a ride "home" to Florida!
Update: Ilya the Manatee Gets a Ride Home to Florida
No byline, this is an excerpt from the complete story at: http://www.nick.com/all_nick/tv_supersites/nick_news/stories_weekly.jhtml?pollId=470824626&wstory=2
Ilya is finally back home in Florida - and not a moment too soon. Ilya is the manatee that was spotted off the coast of Massachusetts during the summer - way north of where manatees normally live. Around mid-October, Ilya resurfaced again - this time, outside an oil refinery in Linden, New Jersey, near New York City. The water coming out of the refinery was a comfortable 75 degrees - just right for a manatee. So Ilya hung around.
But away from the refinery, the temperature of the waters Ilya would have to swim through to get back to Florida had already dipped as low as the 50s - temperatures low enough to kill a manatee. So wildlife officials set about to rescue Ilya. There was just one problem. After gorging himself on lots of lettuce outside the oil refinery, Ilya disappeared - for a week-and-a-half.
Finally, on October 27th, he resurfaced near the oil refinery. According to the Miami Herald, it took rescuers four tries to catch him. After all, it's not easy to catch an animal that's estimated to be nine feet long and weigh 1,100 pounds. But the rescuers were finally able to get Ilya out of the water. They took him to the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine, New Jersey. And on October 29th, he was loaded onto a US Coast Guard cargo plane and flown to Miami.
Ilya is continuing his recovery at Miami's Seaquarium. He's getting special medical treatment - and all the lettuce he can eat. "It looks like he does have a good chance (to recover)," said Seaquarium veterinarian Maya Rodriguez, in an interview with the Associated Press. "He doesn't have severe signs of cold stress." Ilya also has some company, reportedly - a young female manatee. "Right away, they were touching noses," Rodriguez told the Boston Globe. "It'll be good for him, because he hasn't had company for awhile."
Scientists say they've been tracking Ilya for the past ten years or so. They say he has swum north in summers past. But he has never stayed up north so late in the year. Now, thanks to some caring humans, Ilya is back where manatees are supposed to be - the warm waters of Florida. "We're very relieved," said Bob Schoelkopf, the co-director of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center, in an interview with the Associated Press. "We spent a lot of days worrying about him."
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Great Video Story on the James River Manatee
Keep an eye out for the James River manatee, who may be headed on south towards Hampton Roads, VA! Read more about it and watch the video here:
http://www.wtvr.com/news/wtvr-manatee-story,0,1326718.story
or here:
http://www.wtkr.com/news/wtkr-manatee-james-river,0,4906136.story
And Ilya is still stalled in New Jersey: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/10/17/wayward_manatee_may_settle_in_secaucus_nj/
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Manatees sighted in NJ and VA
It's that time of the year along the eastern coast of the USA. With a sudden drop in temperatures last week, at least 2 manatees may be too far north to make it back home to Florida for the winter. As behavioral thermoregulators, these unique and endangered "sea cows" seek warmer water when temperatures drop below ~68 F. Extended periods of time in cooler water is lethal.
I have hope for the manatee in the James River, near Richmond, Virginia. There is a warm water effluent there, which the manatee may know from previous travels. It's not unusual to hear reports of manatees in the Chesapeake Bay watershed as late as the Urbanna Oyster Festival, which is held on the first Friday & Saturday in November each year.
The NJ animal, probably Ilya, who has been sighted several times in the area over the past month, may not survive if the rescue team cannot find and recover him.
I'm hoping for a warm spell so these and any other sirenian wanderlusts can find their way south for the winter.
Here are the latest reports on both sea cows:
Fearing chilly end for manatee seen in Kill Van Kull (New Jersey)
Source: http://www.nj.com/news/jjournal/bayonne/index.ssf?/base/news-5/1256106329212650.xml&coll=3
Wednesday, October 21, 2009 By CHARLES HACK JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
Animal rescuers fear for the welfare of a sea cow that was last reported in the Kill Van Kull near the Atlas Yacht Club in Bayonne on Monday, several hundred miles north of its native Florida waters, according to the Marine Mammal Stranding Center.
A caller reported seeing a manatee - also known as a sea cow - at about 8:30 p.m. Monday night to U.S. Coast Guard, officials said. Coast Guard, New Jersey State Police and the Marine Mammal Stranding Center were unable to find the manatee and confirm if it was Ilya, a manatee that wandered north from Florida, where it has been living for at least a decade.
It was spotted near Massachusetts and Connecticut in August and most recently in the Arthur Kill near Linden on Friday.
"We don't know with certainty it was Ilya," said Chuck Underwood, a public information officer from the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife, based in Jacksonville Fla. "The sighting was only for two to three minutes so although it seems likely we can't confirm it."
Ilya, a 6-to 8-foot-long male manatee with a thick fan-shaped tail with propeller scars on its back, was previously seen Friday afternoon in the Arthur Kill between Staten Island and the ConocoPhillips refinery in Linden, after first being spotted in the area the day before.
Director Robert Schoelkopf said the mammal appeared healthy at the time, but officials are now concerned it could die in the chilly New Jersey waters.
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Manatee reported in James River (Richmond, Virginia)
Source: http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/local/article/MANAGATER21_20091021-122002/300695/
By Rex Springston Published: October 21, 2009
A manatee has been spotted in the James River, wildlife officials say. The large aquatic mammal, also called a sea cow, was reported Tuesday just below downtown Richmond and several miles downriver, officials say.
Pictures sent in by a witness show what appears to indeed be a manatee, said Julia Dixon, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. "It does look like we have a manatee hanging around the area," Dixon said today. The docile, plant-eating animals are native to Florida. Some head north in summer, apparently looking for new places to live. When the water turns cold, they go back south.
The average adult is about 10 feet long and weighs about 1,000 pounds. Anyone who sees the manatee or gets a picture of it should call the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at (804) 693-6694.
However, a wildlife service official asked that people not go out looking for the animal, which is an endangered species.
Officials don't want people hitting the manatee with their boats or otherwise disturbing it. A manatee was spotted in Richmond in 2002.
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Dugong Hunter Turns Protector
The IUCN Red List has classified the dugong as "vulnerable to extinction", primarily due to overhunting, pollution, and unsustainable development. The mammal has already disappeared from several of its natural habitats. But, the dugong's endangered status is only part of the reason why Khanh stopped hunting the endangered cousin to the manatee.
The modern dugong’s range spans at least 48 countries and an estimated 140,000 km (~87,000 mi) of coastline in the Pacific and Indian Oceans from Okinawa, Japan, to Mozambique, East Africa. Although the total size of the global population is unknown, local populations are thought to be declining in at least one third of the range.
- Author Unknown. 2009. From Slayer to Protector. Downloaded on 2 August 2009.
- Marsh, H. 2008. Dugong dugon. In: IUCN 2009. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Downloaded on 2 August 2009.
- Self-Sullivan, C. & Mignucci-Giannoni, A. 2008. Trichechus manatus ssp. manatus. In: IUCN 2009. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2009.1. <www.iucnredlist.org>. Downloaded on 02 August 2009.


