Manatee rehab made possible at Mote with new federal designation

Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium announced two new manatee patients, Cabbage and Sleet, the first patients as part of the organization’s new federal designation.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently granted Mote approval to allow the facility to become a secondary care facility for the rehabilitation of manatees.

Mote President and CEO Michael Crosby said the designation is a significant step in aiding a larger issue across the state.

“Receiving a designation from the USFWS as a secondary care facility for the rehabilitation of manatees is a big game-changer for the state of Florida,” Crosby said. “It’s something that Mote has long worked on.”

When a manatee is first rescued and is in critical condition, it gets transported to a primary, or acute, care facility in the state. Then, after it's deemed stable, the manatee gets transported to a secondary care facility where it will receive care until it is ready to be released. 

The issue, Crosby said, is that there aren’t enough secondary care facilities in the state. 

Think of it as a hospital. Patients get taken to the intensive care unit for immediate attention. Then, when they are stable, they move to a normal hospital room. But now, there aren’t enough beds — or, in this case, tanks — in secondary care. 

This means there's a crowd in the ICU, or primary care facilities, with stable patients, and there's no room for new patients who need critical care.

Crosby estimated of the approximately 70 manatees under human care in the state, about 60 are still in primary care facilities, though many of them could transport to secondary care. 

“The result of this is a backlog of animals that do not require acute care that are in these acute care facilities, meaning newly rescued manatees that desperately need that acute care cannot get it,” Crosby said. “The result of that, unfortunately, is that we have more manatees that are not going to survive because those critical care facilities aren’t available.”

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According to Crosby, there are fewer than a dozen secondary care facilities in the state. 

Most secondary care facilities can hold one to three manatees. Mote’s can hold about two, and Crosby said he would be hesitant to take in any more.

To receive the secondary care designation, Crosby said it was critical to ensure the correct infrastructure was in place. This included substantial backups in place for the tanks, advanced filtration systems, and crane and lift operations to move the large mammals.

Mote also works with other organizations like ZooTampa at Lowry Park, the Bishop Museum of Science and Nature, and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, all with the same goal: rehabilitation and the goal of release.

Crosby emphasized the serious need for more secondary care facilities and wants Mote to do whatever it can to help the situation.

“This is a serious situation in the state of Florida,” Crosby said. “There’s immense pressure on our existing manatee population.”

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Manatees face threats like lack of food from seagrass die-offs, red tide effects and cold stun impacts. Facing these pressures, individuals from the already threatened species often need the acute care that sometimes is not available because of the limited secondary facilities.

Crosby said that unfortunately, when manatees aren’t able to be taken into a primary care facility, the animals could die in the wild. Or, if the case is severe, a manatee might need to be euthanized if tank space is not available.

“Given that manatees are at such a vulnerable state of population level, we can’t afford to lose manatees just because we don’t have, as a state, the amount of capacity in secondary care facilities,” Crosby said.

Mote hopes to create another, much larger secondary care facility at the Mote Aquaculture Research Park on Fruitville Road in Sarasota. According to Crosby, Mote submitted a $5 million request to the state legislature for this project that could hold up to 12 manatees for secondary care.

The goal for Mote is to increase its capacity to take in manatees for secondary care and, by doing so, help the threatened population of manatees across the state.