マナティー赤ちゃん治療中　死骸急増の米フロリダ

【タンパＡＦＰ＝時事】２歳になるマナティーの赤ちゃん「ラティバ」は、救命具を着けなければ水面に上がってきて呼吸ができないほど弱っていた。（写真は米フロリダ州のタンパ動物園にある集中治療用の水槽で泳ぐマナティーのラティバ）
　ラティバは、幸運に恵まれていた。米フロリダ州ではこれまでにないペースでマナティーが死んでおり、動物病院の「病床」は限界に達している。
　４月初めに救助された時、ラティバは赤潮や有害な藻類の増殖が原因の「有害藻類ブルーム」によって起こる、強力な神経毒ブレベトキシン（神経性貝毒）の深刻な症状を示していた。
　ラティバは、自分で呼吸できるようになったが、今も集中治療用の水槽で状態観察が続けられている。隣にいるベリッシマは発見当初、栄養失調で船と衝突して重傷を負っていた。
　フロリダ州のマナティーの主な死因には、人間が使用した化学肥料が原因で発生した赤潮や生息地での餌の喪失、船との衝突によるショックなどが挙げられる。
　今年に入り同州では、死骸となって見つかるマナティーが急増している。
　フロリダ魚類・野生生物保存委員会（ＦＷＣ）によると、１月１日から４月半ばまでにフロリダ水域で発見されたマナティーの死骸は６７４頭に上る。
　これは過去５年間の同期に発見された死骸の約３倍に相当する。
　ラティバとベリッシマは、容体が落ち着き次第、回復用の水槽に移される予定だ。回復用の水槽では約２０頭のマナティーが、元の環境に戻れるようになるまで保護されている。餌はレタスだ。
　フロリダ州には、マナティーの保護施設が５か所ある。タンパの施設が最大で、集中治療用の水槽３槽を有する。
　しかし、今年に入り死亡率が急増していることから、これら保護施設の能力は限界に達している。
　フロリダ州東岸で今年、マナティーがこれほど多く死んだのは、過度な肥料や下水により有害藻類ブルームが発生し、日光が十分に当たらなくなり海藻が枯れたことが一因だとみられる。
　ＦＷＣは３月、「異例の大量死発生」を緊急事態と認定。これにより、連邦政府の資金による調査が可能となった。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】

〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2021/05/12-13:57）

Baby manatee Lativa was so sick that her caregivers had to put a flotation device on her to allow her to come to the surface to breathe.
Others have not been so lucky: the gentle marine mammals are dying at an unprecedented rate in Florida, and there are not enough animal hospital beds to handle the crisis.
When two-year-old Lativa was rescued earlier this month, she was suffering from severe exposure to brevetoxins, potent neurotoxins produced by red tides or algae blooms that have contaminated some bodies of water in the US state.
She was found beached and they never beach themselves... she was completely unresponsive, recounts Molly Lippincott, animal care manager for ZooTampa at Lowry Park.
Lippincott shows a video of Lativa, her head resting on a pool noodle.
Today, the manatee is breathing on her own, but is still being closely monitored in an intensive care tank next to Bellisima, who was found malnourished and seriously injured after being hit by a boat.
The red tides caused by human use of fertilizers, the loss of food sources in their natural habitat and the shocks caused by collisions with boats are among the leading causes of manatee deaths in Florida.
And this year, the death toll is skyrocketing.
From January 1 to mid-April, 674 manatees have been found dead in Florida waters, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
That is nearly triple the number of manatee deaths recorded in the same period in each of the previous five years.
We're just having a lot more issues environmentally, because there's such a large number of people that live here now, said Lippincott.
When the conditions of Lativa and Bellisima improve, they will be moved to recovery pools, where about 20 manatees are fed lettuce and cared for until they can return to their natural surroundings.
There are five manatee hospitals in the Sunshine State. The one in Tampa is one of the biggest and has three intensive care tanks. The tank bottoms can be raised to care for the animals.
But the shocking mortality rate this year has stretched these facilities to their limit.
Veterinarians are trying to just figure out how to shuffle manatees so that you can free up the critical care facilities, says Cynthia Stringfield, the senior vice president of animal health, conservation and education at ZooTampa.
But right now, it's a juggling act to try to have space for everybody.
- Scars from boat collisions -
Manatees, distant cousins of elephants, are playful warm-water giants who graze on seagrasses and live in shallow waters because they need to surface frequently to breathe.
Normally, an increase in the number of manatee deaths can be attributed to collisions with boats and jet skis that speed through the manatees' habitat.
When a manatee is coming up for a breath, that's when they're usually vulnerable and get hit by a boat, Lippincott explains.
In zoo recovery pools, many of the animals have scars -- a jagged line when the manatee hit a boat keel, or parallel stripes when it was hit by an outboard motor.
They really move very slowly. They cruise at about five miles an hour, so they don't have time to get away from boats. We need people to slow down when they're in shallow water, Lippincott says.
Florida does not require boat operators to have licenses. Users just need to complete a course that does not include a lot of information about local wildlife.
And tourists who rent boats often are unaware that manatees even exist, even though there are 7,000 of them in the state.
- 'Unusual Mortality Event' -
The high number of manatee deaths so far this year on Florida's eastern shores seems to be due in part to the disappearance of seagrass, which is not getting enough sunlight due to algae blooms flourishing from both fertilizer use and excess sewage.
Last month, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission classified the dire situation as an unusual mortality event, a rare move that unblocks federal funds for an investigation.
Many of these manatees, sometimes called sea cows, have been found suffering from malnutrition along Florida's central and southern Atlantic coastline.
Complicating the already fraught situation, a breach at a wastewater reservoir on the site of a former fertilizer plant on Florida's Gulf coast sent thousands of gallons of polluted water into Tampa Bay.
We're not seeing the effects of that yet, but we're concerned that that could be an up and coming problem, Stringfield says.
In May 2017, a few months after Donald Trump assumed the US presidency, federal authorities reclassified manatees, downgrading them from endangered to threatened -- thereby reducing the protections afforded to them.