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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday July 23 2017, @10:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the a-sound-conclusion dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Slower boat speeds reduce risks to manatees. Or do they? Not exactly, according to research conducted at Florida Atlantic University. In fact, the very laws enacted to slow down boats in manatee habitats may actually be doing more harm than good. However, an innovative alerting device is proving to deliver a better solution.

About 100 manatees are killed each year by boats, making it the leading cause of death for this species. Not only are they hit frequently, they are hit repeatedly and have the scars to prove it. It is often thought that's because these gentle giants move too slowly to get out of harm's way or perhaps they are not smart enough to know better.

Not true according to Edmund Gerstein, Ph.D., director of marine mammal research in FAU's Charles E. Schmidt College of Science and his wife Laura, who have spent the last 20 years researching manatees to get to the root of this problem and to dispel these myths. What they have discovered is that manatees have difficulty hearing and locating low frequency sounds like the humming of an idling engine or a slow moving boat. Shallow and murky waters further exacerbate this problem and make boats both acoustically and visually invisible to unwary manatees.

"The idea of slowing down boats to protect manatees might make us feel better, but it has direct acoustic consequences in shallow water that place manatees at greater risk of collisions," said Edmund Gerstein. "While a slow speed zone may reduce the chance of death during a collision, they have not mitigated the number of collisions that kill and may have actually increased the number of non-fatal injuries."

Slowing down boats makes it more difficult for manatees to detect and locate approaching boats, while increasing the transect times or how long it takes for boats to actually pass through manatee habitats. When manatees are unable to reliably detect approaching boats, increasing time of exposure increases the risk of collisions.

"The increase in multiple propeller and boat scar patterns we are seeing on surviving animals is consistent with the implementation of slow speed zones in their habitats," said Edmund Gerstein. "Today, we have living manatees that have been hit dozens of times some with as much as 50 different scar patterns from boat encounters."

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday July 23 2017, @10:07PM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday July 23 2017, @10:07PM (#543497) Homepage

    Manatees eat plants, and underwater plants are closer to the surface. There is the problem of getting one's propeller tangled up in sea vegetation, but there are countermeasures.

    Though it may be possible that the stupider fishermen confuse them for seals and sea-lions, and fishermen hate competition. If they can get away with it (and they often can, as nobody else is watching out at sea), they will shoot any animals competing for fish. Even fishermen close to shore consider animals like Otters vermin, and will shoot them if they can get away with it.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @10:19PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @10:19PM (#543503)

    About 100 manatees are killed each year by boats, making it the leading cause of death for this species.

    How many manatees die each year in total?

    • (Score: 2) by BK on Sunday July 23 2017, @10:45PM (1 child)

      by BK (4868) on Sunday July 23 2017, @10:45PM (#543508)

      137 +/- 15 for 2005-2015

      --
      ...but you HAVE heard of me.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @11:19PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @11:19PM (#543518)

        This is for the entire species?

  • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Sunday July 23 2017, @10:49PM

    by RamiK (1813) on Sunday July 23 2017, @10:49PM (#543509)
    --
    compiling...
  • (Score: 2) by tibman on Sunday July 23 2017, @11:33PM

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Sunday July 23 2017, @11:33PM (#543521)

    The reason for going slow isn't just to allow the manatee to move out of the way. It gives the boat time to see the manatee and steer out of the way.

    --
    SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Arik on Monday July 24 2017, @12:26AM (3 children)

    by Arik (4543) on Monday July 24 2017, @12:26AM (#543527) Journal
    So often we are told that wherever there is a problem the government must 'do something.'

    And so often we find out years later that doing something actually aggravated the problem.

    How long before we start to notice the underlying pattern?
    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @01:04AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @01:04AM (#543537)

      Not just government. Most of healthcare is like this. If you have an only rudimentary understanding of something (eg the human body) trying to fix it is likely not going to work out just because there are so many more ways for things to break.

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @08:12AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @08:12AM (#543609)

        Not just government. Most of healthcare is like this.

        And not just them, but private business Capitalism Entrepreeners are exactly like this. They pretend to be a "service" that will "solve" your problems, but they end up causing even more, and more deadly, problems! As Customer Service training taught a one place I worked, briefly, "Don't just handle the problem, OWN the problem!" And they took it one more step: "Don't just own the problem, BE the problem! And then offer to fix it for a small fee. Nice $whatever you have there. Would be shame if something were to happen to it!" Ah, libertarian Somalian Paradise privitization fantasies, they get me every time.

      • (Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday July 25 2017, @12:08AM

        by Arik (4543) on Tuesday July 25 2017, @12:08AM (#543946) Journal
        This is the reason for the (much maligned and much ignored) Hippocratic oath.
        --
        If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @02:22AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @02:22AM (#543556)

    Any laws based on what is obvious ought be reviewed.

    These heuristics are too often wrong in a time when they're optional.

    It's worth remembering how obvious it is to many that god exists, blacks are stupid, and injecting mercury is a bad idea.

  • (Score: 2) by shortscreen on Monday July 24 2017, @08:31AM (1 child)

    by shortscreen (2252) on Monday July 24 2017, @08:31AM (#543613) Journal

    Manatees can't dodge fast boats, but they don't even notice slow boats. So what does it take to shoo them away? What if the boats were equipped with underwater strobe lights and speakers that played Rick Astley?

    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday July 24 2017, @03:57PM

      by Immerman (3985) on Monday July 24 2017, @03:57PM (#543737)

      Sadly, manatees are the only species known to enjoy listening to Astley.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @05:37PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @05:37PM (#543787)

    why not just put a large grate/guard across the bottom of the boats so that nothing big can hit a propeller? make it angled so that when you hit a manatee he gets a slight headache(maybe it could play a sound to make him remember. like boats emit the sound and then when he gets hit it makes a corresponding sound so the manatee never lets that shit happen again) and you get a free BioRamp Experience (tm) with every collision. no boats can enter that part of the ocean without the Manatee Deshredding System under penalty of torpedo and/or cruise missile.

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