Manatees –
The mermaids of myth and folklore.
When you watch the Underwater Manatee-Cam at Blue Spring State Park and see these slow-moving, heavyset animals up close, it’s hard to imagine how anybody could mistake them for a half-human, half-fishlike being. But if you go back some thousand, or even a few hundred years, before science enlightened nature and natural history, a sailor might well see a creature rising up out of the ocean from far away, remember stories about half-woman/half-fish sea beasts and conclude that he encountered a mermaid. Almost exactly 530 years ago, on January 9, 1493, Christopher Columbus was certain he glimpsed three mermaids, and he wrote in his journal:
…when the Admiral went to the Rio del Oro [Haiti], he said he quite distinctly saw three mermaids, which rose well out of the sea; but they are not so beautiful as they are said to be, for their faces had some masculine traits.1
The ocean can be a dangerous and unpredictable environment for ships, even today with radar, electrical power, and diesel engines. Some thousand years ago, when nature and reality were seen through a lens colored by immortal deities, myths, and supernatural beings, whales were associated with the destructive sea monster Leviathan. In Icelandic mythology giant octopuses and squid were identified as Kraken, which could swallow whole sailing ships and every creature on it.2 And manatees and dugongs (another herbivorous aquatic mammal of the order Sirenia) were the legendary mermaids, but also the dangerous sirens who would lure sailors to their death with mesmerizing singing.
I grew up with fairytales, and those by Hans Christian Andersen belonged to my favorites, especially The Little Mermaid, written in 1836. It is a beautiful and sad tale, and to this day I refuse to watch the Disney version with its happy ending which sounds like blasphemy to me.
Unlike the alluring sirens of the Odyssey for example, who bewitched sailors and led their ships off course to their deaths, Andersen’s mermaid has a good and pure heart. She sacrifices everything for the human she loves and would rather die than harm him. No wonder she inspired the iconic sculpture in Copenhagen Harbor. Interestingly, the artist (Edvard Eriksen) chose to sculpt his figure as a twin-tailed mermaid, with what looks like two legs. Maybe this is an homage to the fairytale – although at the beginning she and her sisters definitely have fish tails, she later gives up her voice for a pair of human legs.
Let’s look at manatees and explore why they could be mistaken for some creature resembling a human being. For one thing, they are mammals and give live birth to their young, whom they nurse for up to two years. They can rise up out of the waters and appear to be standing upright. From far away, seen by a sailor on a ship that is tossed around by gigantic waves, at a time when mythic creatures were abundant, maybe the sight of a mermaid was also motivated by wishful thinking…
When looked at closely, manatees turn out to be quite amazing creatures: they share a common ancestor with and thus are related to the elephant. Their large bodies are grey or brown, they weigh between 800 and 1200 pounds (some can get up to 3000 pounds!), and are about 10 feet long. They have a flat, rounded tail shaped like a paddle which they use to propel themselves forward. They’re laid-back and move around only slowly, although short bursts with speeds of up to 20 miles an hour have been recorded. A manatee mom is pregnant for about a year, then she gives birth to one calf, very rarely twins. She will nurse her baby for up to two years.
Manatees are herbivores and eat a large variety of freshwater and saltwater plants. They spend many hours every day grazing along the bottom of their habitat, consuming more than 10% of their body weight or 100 to 150 pounds of underwater greens. Their habitats are shallow, slow-moving rivers, estuaries, saltwater bays, canals, and coastal areas — particularly where seagrass beds or freshwater vegetation flourish. Manatees are a migratory species. Within the United States, they are concentrated in Florida in the winter.
Unfortunately, climate change, pollution, and human activities have endangered these gentle giants. For years they were listed on the Endangered Species Preservation Act of 1966. Over the years, conservation efforts temporarily decreased the manatee mortality rate and allowed them to be declared as “vulnerable”, which means they are still protected under the Endangered Species Act, but not considered “endangered”. This changed again in 2021 when 1,100 manatees died from pollution-caused starvation in Florida. In 2022 another nearly 800 deaths were reported. Several environmental groups are petitioning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to once again list the manatees as an endangered species to save them from extinction.
The petition, also sponsored by the Save the Manatee Club, Miami Waterkeeper and others, contends that pollution from fertilizer runoff, leaking septic tanks, wastewater discharges and increased development is triggering algae blooms that have killed much of the seagrass on which manatees depend, especially on Florida's east coast.3
Although there are feeding programs that provide over 200,000 pounds of lettuce for the manatees in order to shield them from starvation, the cause of the problem has to be addressed: the seagrass beds and underwater greens which the manatees depend on for food have been largely destroyed, up to 75%, by pollution from agriculture, urban sewage, and fertilizer runoff. Without a concerted effort to improve the water quality of Florida’s coastal and intracoastal waterways the manatees don’t have much of a fighting chance.
Tourists and visitors in Florida seem to be quite taken by these gentle, friendly creatures; maybe that will help and support the organizations and nonprofits that fight for the manatees’ existence. Actually, if you live somewhere else, you still can help: you can symbolically adopt a manatee! For $25/year you can “adopt” Brutus
for example, one of Blue Spring State Park’s largest manatees. He weighs in at almost 1,900 pounds and has been a regular winter visitor since 1970.
They need our help to survive!
Such sweet animals;)