How Did Florida Manatees Wind Up All the Way in North Carolina?

Last week, a handful of Florida manatees were spotted hanging around the shores of North Carolina.

Photos shared by local news outlets in the Outer Banks show the mammals grazing and swimming around in the Southern Shores, several hundred miles away from their native Sunshine State. In one image, a large sea cow's signature snoot is seen breaking the surface of the shoreline.

But while the manatees may seem far from home, Beth Brady, a senior science and conservation associate with the nonprofit Save the Manatee, explains that summer migrations can take these mammals as far north as Massachusetts waters.

"They're traveling longer distances than we've ever thought that they would," Brady tells New Times.

Brady explains that it's part of manatees' "normal range" to travel up to the coastline to the Carolinas during the summer, but they've been known to travel even further — with some previously making their way as far as the Bahamas, Cuba, and even Mexico.

She notes that manatees have excellent spatial memories, allowing them to remember the routes they traveled from one year to the next.

"So it's like, 'How do they remember to get to these places?'" Brady asks. "But they do remember them year to year."

One of the theories as to why the mammals go to North Carolina is that they're seeking better forage, such as the salt marsh grass in the Carolinas, Brady says.

She says that when the waters around the Carolinas start to get colder around November and December (AKA quite soon) the manatees (who cannot survive for long periods of time in cold waters) will begin to make their way back down south to their warm water refugees.

Brady emphasizes the importance of documenting and reporting any sightings of manatees in unusual places via Save the Manatee's website.

"Those waters are going to start to get cold, and we want to make sure those animals start making their way back down to Florida," she says.

The past few years have been exceptionally deadly for the beloved mammals, which typically inhabit the state's coastal waters, rivers, and springs, moving freely between fresh, saline, and brackish waters.

In 2021, more than 1,000 manatees died in a historic event attributed partly to starvation, leading state and federal wildlife officials to take the unusual step of buying several dozen tons of lettuce to hand-feed to them along Florida's eastern shore.

The spike in deaths has been linked to the drastic loss of their primary food source, seagrass. Growth of the underwater plants has been stymied thanks to pollution and algae that has clogged up parts of the Indian River Lagoon, where herds of manatees gather during winter.