Ilya onboard USCG transport!

Source: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/10/30/wayward_manatee_safely_back_in_fla/

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."

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/

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.

==========================
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.

Dugong Hunter Turns Protector

Nguyen Van Khanh used to be known as "The Dugong Slayer of Phu Quoc"

The 44 year-old fisherman learned how to fish dugong from his father when he was 19. Since that time, he has caught about 200 dugongs weighing from 150-800 kg (~300-1600 lbs). His father, who was also a famous dugong hunter on Phu Quoc island, Vietnam, caught even more dugongs during his lifetime. "If my family caught 500 dugongs alone, then Phu Quoc fishermen must have caught into the thousands," said Khanh, who long longer hunts dugong. Photo from http://www.thanhniennews.com/.

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.

Khanh says he stopped hunting dugong in 2002 due to a more personal experience. "I saw a baby dugong squealing, like it was crying, while watching its mother entangled in our net. The mother couldn’t do anything but stare back at its child with sad eyes." Although he had heard about the marine mammal's "deep maternal love" since he started hunting, Khanh had never experienced it first-hand. "I then swore not to hunt dugong anymore."

The southwestern Mekong Delta province of Kien Giang, which includes Phu Quoc, has banned the hunting of dugong and other rare species. Khanh now works for a World Wild Life Fund marine conservation project on the island. He spends his days visiting local villages to help increase awareness of the dugong's endangered and protected status. Although many fishermen stopped hunting dugong after the ban, some still take dugongs illegally. "I advise any person who is still hunting for dugongs to quit," said Khanh. "Some listen to me, but others get angry with me, saying I’m poking my nose into their business ...but I’m not discouraged, because this is how I pay my debt to the sea."

Poaching continues to be a serious problem for sirenians (manatees & dugongs) in poor countries around the world where they are hunted for their bones, tusks and meat. In Vietnam, a pair of tusks can bring the equivalent of $500-$900 US dollars. In Ghana, one West African manatee can sell for the equivalent of a year's income and similar situations exist in Central and South America for West Indian and Amazonian manatees.

Because manatees and dugongs are long-lived, have a low reproductive rates, and long generation times, females investment a great deal of energy in each offspring. Calves remain with their mothers for up to two years, nursing and learning to navigate among activity areas suitable for feeding, resting, mating, and giving birth. In some cases, this includes long migration routes.

Even under the most optimistic conditions (e.g. no human-induced mortality) a sirenian population is likely to increase at no more than 5% per year. This makes manatees and dugongs extremely vulnerable to over-exploitation. For example, Steller's sea cow, another member of the Dugongidae Family, was hunted to extinction in 1768, just 27 years after it was discovered by modern man in the Commander Islands of the North Pacific.

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.

Sirenian International is dedicated to the long-term conservation of manatee and dugong populations and our shared aquatic habitats around the world through research, educational outreach, and capacity building. You can read more about the dugong project we supported in Con Dao, Vietnam online, just click the hyperlink above. And please remember us when budgeting for your charitable donations. Adopt a Mermaid Ambassador or Donate online at http://www.sirenian.org/. View great photos of dugongs and dugong hunting activities by Doug Perrine online at http://seapics.com/.

References

• 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.