Stranded manatee calf rescued near Deep Water Pier
Conservation officials were called out to Deep Water Pier at the Port Authority today to rescue a young manatee stranded in the area. The calf, believed to be about a month old, was spotted swimming along the pier by workers this morning. According to Researcher Nicole Auil, the mother of the young mammal is believed to be dead and if rescuers didn’t arrive when they did, the calf herself might have become a statistic.
Nicole Auil, Marine Researcher, CZMP
“We have this animal here along with the veterinarian? examined her and she is not in a very good condition. We are hoping that we will be able to keep her through for the next couple of days: feeding her every three hours and then transferring her to an institute in Mexico where she can be properly taken care of with proper facilities because we don’t have that in Belize.”
P. J.
“It is particularly encouraging, like what you said, for once we found a live one and not a dead one.”
Nicole Auil
“That’s right and there is a little bit of hope here. This is a female calf and it would really be a victory, a triumph if we got her rehabilitated. If we have her transferred to Vera Cruz and rehabilitated thereafter… But so far we’re doing a pretty good job. We have great help from Dr. DeShields and fisheries staff and we’re getting a lot of help here. So, she is not in very good condition. To be quite frank, she may not make it. The likelihood of her making it is quite slim but we’re giving it a try.”
Dr. Michael DeShields, Veterinarian
“Even in the best of conditions it is very tricky to maintain an animal like this. It requires a lot of nursing care and frequently they do not make it so we say it is guarded; it is still very dicey.”
Q: “Is it suffering from any noticeable disease or ailments?”
Dr. Michael DeShields
“No, it is ailments as far as stress. It is dehydrated, definitely dehydrated. Its temperature is very, very low because it was going in the cold water out there. Now it’s warming up a little bit and we notice a little activity, as it gets a little bit warmer. It has a mouth lesion by the dental pad probably from knocking against something a scraping it. Still, no, most of it is superficial. The most of the body look pretty good. There is no abnormalities or anything like that that we can notice.”
Q: “From a doctor’s perspective, how long would you say that this animal was separated from its mother?”
Dr. Michael DeShields
“I am not quite sure. This is fairly new to me but I would say maybe a day or two at least. I think from the amount of dehydration and the weakness when retrieved? it was very weak so it didn’t have any food for quite a while? at least two days.”
Q: “Could the mother be the victim of an accident? We found at least two manatees dead on the other side in the last month.”
Nicole Auil
“That’s right. I have no evidence to show that any of these females had delivered or were feeding or were nursing so I am not sure but it is quite possible that the female did die. Maybe we will find her carcass wash up on some other beach sometime this week. Mothers don’t abandon their calf so something happened to this mother or she got lost – the calf got lost herself.”
Q: “Nicole is thinking that the animal is not in very good shape, from a doctor’s perspective is that a good assumption?”
Dr. Michael DeShields
“Yes, that’s a very good assumption but we are a little bit encouraged that it is feeding. We did bottle feed it a little bit with some electrolytes and we’re getting some soy milk and a special diet that’s recommended by people who are more up to date with this sort of thing. So we are going to try and nourish it and do the best that we can.”
Auil says anyone interested in helping to care for the young manatee can call the Coastal Zone Management Project during normal working hours.
