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Morning News

Florida Environmental Protection Official Discusses Manatee Migration

Aired January 2, 2001 - 11:25 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Wintertime means that manatees are on the move looking for warmer weather. Workers at Blue Spring State Park in Florida say dozens of manatees migrated to the park's 72 degree waters.

Joining us from Tallahassee now is David Struhs. He's with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

Good morning, thanks for joining us.

DAVID STRUHS, FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION: Good morning.

KAGAN: For those folks who haven't visited the Southeast and aren't lucky enough to be familiar with manatees, tell our viewers a little bit about these remarkable animals.

STRUHS: Well, I think you got it right, Daryn, when you called them gentle giants. They are herbivores, meaning they only eat aquatic plants. They are very gentle. They're also very vulnerable -- they're vulnerable to speeding boats, they're also vulnerable to cold weather. And that's something that we are having an uncharacteristically large amount of these last few days here in Florida.

So what happens when the water gets cold? The manatees tend to congregate in warm water areas, and one of the more popular ones is the Blue Spring because it is a constant temperature of 72 degrees.

KAGAN: So more manatee folk than usual have showed up, I understand.

STRUHS: Yes, they're -- they are congregating in large numbers now, and that's probably a very good thing for us because, coincidentally, next weekend and this coming weekend, we have our annual manatee survey, where people get up in airplanes and fly over these spots and try to get a good count of what the population actually looks like. So the cold weather will assist with that.

KAGAN: And we're talking about the northeastern -- the northwestern side, off the coast of Florida.

STRUHS: Well, you can find them all over the coast of Florida, but one interesting thing that's happening just tomorrow, in fact, is we're going to be trying to relocate about half a dozen manatees from a thermal discharge near a power plant, where they're enjoying that warm water but it's an intermittent supply, and it puts them at some risk, and we're going to try to physically relocate them to Blue Spring State Park, which you mentioned earlier.

KAGAN: And how are you going to do that?

STRUHS: Very carefully.

KAGAN: These are slow-moving, gentle animals that kind of take their time.

STRUHS: Yes, we're going to have to rent a lot of very large U- Haul trucks and put in plenty of blankets and keep them warm. They are mammals, of course, so that we can remove them from the water and transport them. We're going to try to do that with the minimum amount of disruption. We're looking at about, probably, half a dozen.

KAGAN: Oh, you're physically going to take them up from the water?

STRUHS: Pulling them out of the water, putting them in trucks, and relocating them to our state park, the Blue Spring State Park, where there's a natural supply of relatively warm water coming from a natural spring.

They're currently congregating, just half a dozen, at a power plant.

KAGAN: Where is that?

STRUHS: Just up the river, the St. John's River, and...

KAGAN: But sometimes the warm -- the warm water's coming out, and sometimes it's not.

STRUHS: Right, sometimes they operate the power plant, sometimes they don't. and the on-again-off-again warm water tends to disrupt their natural cycle. So we want to put them where they have a regular supply of warm water, and they'll find that in the park, along with 80 of their other cousins.

KAGAN: A few years ago, I had the privilege of going to Crystal Springs, where you can actually go and swim with the manatees, and you get right there, and you can see how rather large these animals are. How are you physically going to get those up out of the water...

STRUHS: Oh, very carefully.

KAGAN: Yes.

STRUHS: Very carefully -- I'm not exactly sure how they're going to do it. It depends on the local conditions. But we're got the power company that runs the power plant has been very generous in making a crane available to help lift them out of the water. I know that in the past, they may look at other things, including helicopters. So we'll have to watch exactly how they do that tomorrow.

But we who operate the parks are looking forward to receiving them tomorrow and promise to take good care of them.

KAGAN: A warm welcome, literally.

STRUHS: Yes, ma'am, thank you.

KAGAN: Well, good luck with that and saving those six manatees, and thank you very much for joining us this morning, David Struhs.

STRUHS: Thank you.

KAGAN: Good to have you.

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