[MARINE_BIOLOGY_INTERNATIONAL] Cuba joins efforts to save manatees

Cuba joins efforts to save manatees

A research team affixes a satellite transmitter to a manatee in Cuba. Sarasota's Sea to Shore Alliance, in collaboration with the University of Havana's Center for Marine Investigation, started the first effort in Cuba to track manatees using satellite technology. (Photo provided by Sea to Shore Alliance)

By Eric Ernst
Herald Tribune

Thursday, October 18, 2012 at 2:09 p.m.

A few years ago, as Anmari Alvarez planned her undergrad thesis at the University of Havana, she had to discard her first choice as a subject. She could not write about Cuban manatees, because even the most elementary research on the local population was too scant.

Although she went with bottle-nosed dolphins instead, Alvarez never abandoned her first love.

For almost 10 years, she has worked with eminent manatee researcher James "Buddy" Powell of Sarasota to lay the groundwork for studying manatees in her native land.

In June, the two became part of an historic breakthrough. Powell's small research group, Sea to Shore Alliance, in collaboration with the University of Havana's Center for Marine Investigation, started the first effort in Cuba to track manatees using satellite technology.

For Cuban research, this is a big deal. A few times a year for a decade, Powell and others have measured captured manatees and tested blood, but the inability to determine where those manatees traveled and what they did when they got there has left gaping holes in the scientific log.

The new tracking devices, when belted to a manatee's tail, transmit signals to a satellite, similar to how the GPS system works in a car. Powell logs on to a website, which maps the animal's movement. Although the tag sends no signal when it is under water, Powell says the lack of transmission indicates specific behavior that scientists can interpret after years of similar tracking in Florida.

Powell predicts that Cuba, a large island with favorable geographic features, eventually will be recognized as one of the most important habitats for manatees in the entire Caribbean.

He should know. Powell has engaged in longstanding manatee studies from West Africa to Belize and traces his research pedigree to 1967, when at age 13 he guided Woody Hartman of Cornell University during his seminal manatee studies on Florida's Crystal River. Four years later, he did the same for Jacques Cousteau.

Over a decade, Powell's Cuban endeavors have evolved slowly, partly because the lingering effects of the Cold War have made it hard to travel and to transport equipment between the United States and the island nation.

Network of volunteers

The satellite tracking project took two years to implement and required a special license from the U.S. Department of Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets. The Department of Commerce also had to sign off. Then the Cuban government had its list of bureaucratic hurdles.

Sea to Shore's status as a nonprofit, charitable, scientific organization, not to mention Powell's patient development of relationships — Alvarez being a good example — helped smooth the way. "We're trying to keep any politics out of it. It's just about the science," Powell says.

The science has its own problems. Although manatees have been a protected species in Cuba since 1901, they are still hunted for food. That has made them wary of humans and boats.

Indeed, before Powell could really consider strapping transmitters to manatees, he had to develop a network of volunteers who would report and verify manatee sightings. Manatees move around. Without at least a basic idea of their patterns, covering a number of seasons and years, no one would know where to find them to attach the transmitters.

Aerial surveys are impractical not only because of Cuba's dark waters, but also the expense. Flight time costs about $3,000 a hour.

Even an educated guess of where to find manatees is no guarantee. In January, filled with enthusiasm to start the new tracking program, Powell and a research team went to a mangrove creek where they had recorded lots of manatee sightings. The expedition lasted a week, cost thousands of dollars, and ended with no manatees and no tagging.

Powell surmises an extended drought left the popular gathering area too salty. Chalk up another entry for the data book. He doesn't know where the manatees went instead. With the transmitters, he may get an answer.

In June, the team returned to the creek, this time without Powell. The researchers netted six manatees and attached tags on two.

That's all they could afford. The tags cost $5,000 each. At least it's a start.

'A flagship species'

The tracking research also may have implications for Florida. Five years ago, Alvarez investigated the sighting of a mother and calf near a power plant. She took photos, which revealed extensive scarring on the mother. That's rare in Cuba, where manatees more likely suffer injury or drowning from trawler nets rather than the scarring associated with speedboat encounters in the United States.

When Powell saw the photos, he exclaimed, "I know this manatee!"

Sure enough, Powell had photographed the animal on the Crystal River in 1979 and had seen it there as recently as 2006. He's sure of it, because, in a sad commentary on manatee existence in Florida, the U.S. Geological Survey keeps a record of scarring, which identifies individual manatees almost as unerringly as fingerprints identify humans.

This was no inexperienced juvenile that might have lost its way. Nor were there any major storms to blow the animal off-course. Its appearance in Cuba suggests that some migration takes place, Powell says. He hopes genetic testing and the tracking will reveal more.

Ultimately, the researchers aim to provide a better understanding of how manatees live so their interactions with humans become less harmful, and we can avoid the extinction of another species in our lifetime. There is hope.

Cuba has already declared a moratorium on trawling in some channels. It also has set aside extensive areas for parks and marine resource protection. "They're seizing on manatees as a flagship species, sort of like we did in the '60s," Powell says.

Alvarez insists her compatriots, including the fishermen, support those efforts.

One final observation: Alvarez, 30, hopes to earn her Ph.D. through the University of Florida, where she'll finally get to write that dissertation on manatees. It's not a done deal. She's still trying to work out the finances, a visa and the logistics between UF and the University of Havana.

If she succeeds, Powell believes she will be the first UF doctoral candidate from Cuba in 50 years. There's still hope for the human species, too.