Boat Strikes Significantly Contribute to Increasing Manatee Deaths in Belize, Raising Concerns on Endangered Species’ Survival

A new study reveals that boat strikes are becoming a growing threat to the survival of Antillean manatees in Belize. Such findings raise concerns regarding the survival of the endangered species that once had a comparatively healthy population.

Antillean Manatees

Newsweek reports that Antillean manatees are among two West Indian manatee subspecies. Unlike its subspecies sister, this creature dwells in subtropical and tropical zones from Brazil to the Bahamas.

The National Geographic notes that their population has been dwindling, leading to the species' endangered classification on the IUCN Red List. The manatee species has been considered difficult to protect due to how it is minimally understood.

Boat Strikes Threaten Manatees in Belize

According to Science Daily, Belize houses around a thousand manatees. However, with the surge of tourism in the past decades, the country has also seen a significant rise in boat traffic. This makes boat strikes an increasing contributor to the injury and death of manatees.

The study was included in the Endangered Species Research. The scientists wanted to see how the increase in boat traffic affected the population of these manatees. To do so, they looked into stranding data in Belize that is worth 25 years. The data involved injured or dead animals from 1995 to 2019, Newsweek reports. It also covered six aerial surveys of the species populations and two decades' worth of data pertaining to boat registration, Science Daily adds.

Celeshia Guy Galves, the study's first author, who led the study as a graduate student of the Coastal Science and Policy Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and who is now with the Clearwater Marine Aquarium research in Belize, explains that the work has been shared with authorities in Belize and may directly contribute to planning efforts for conservation.

Galves observed that as boat traffic increased, manatee strandings also increased. In fact, numbers went from 1 to 4 each year in the late 90s and early 2000s to 10 to 17 per year in the latter 2010s. Science Daily adds that strandings were more prevalent in regions where boat traffic and human population were higher and denser and in mangrove habitats.

Marm Kilpatrick, a co-author of the study and an evolutionary biology and ecology professor from the University of California, Santa Cruz, explains that while they knew that boat strikes take place, the study serves as concrete quantitative proof that boat strikes significantly contribute to manatee mortality in Belize.

Science Daily notes that efforts for conservation should focus on boat number and speed reduction in areas where manatee presence is high. High-priority interventions include having more areas that are protected with boat traffic restrictions and having speed restrictions in seagrass habitats that are shallow.

Check out more news and information on Animals in Science Times.