Cathy Beck (Former Employee)

Manatees (Trichechus manatus latirostris) in Florida utilize intake and effluent canals of power plants as resting and thermoregulatory habitat. We report the use of a power plant canal in Cuba by a known Florida manatee, the first documented case of movement by a manatee between Florida and Cuba. In January, February, and April 2007, two manatees (mother and calf) were reported entering...

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) research on Florida manatees (Trichechus manatus latirostris) from 1982 through 1998 identified lower apparent survival rates for adult manatees during years when Hurricane Elena (1985), the March "Storm of the Century"(1993), and Hurricane Opal (1995) hit the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Although our analysis showed that a significant number of our...

Data and specimens collected from dugong carcasses and live stranded individuals provide vital information for research and management agencies. The ability to assign a cause of death (natural and/or human induced) to a carcass assists managers to identify major threats to a population in certain areas and to evaluate and adapt management measures. Data collected from dugong carcasses...

Carbon isotope differences (??13C) between bioapatite and diet, collagen and diet, and bioapatite and collagen were calculated for four species of sirenians, Dugong dugon (Mu??ller), Trichechus manatus (Linnaeus), Trichechus inunguis (Natterer), and the extinct Hydrodamalis gigas (Zimmerman). Bone and tooth samples were taken from archived materials collected from populations during the...

Prior research on manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris) survival in northwest Florida, based on mark-resighting photo-identification data from 1982-1998, showed that annual adult apparent survival rate was significantly lower during years with extreme storms. Mechanisms that we proposed could have led to lower estimates included stranding, injury from debris, being fatally swept out...

Reports of West Indian manatees (Trichechus manatus) in the US Gulf of Mexico west of Florida have increased during the last decade. We reviewed all available manatee sighting, capture, and carcass records (n = 377) from Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas since the early 1900s; only 40 of these were previously published. Manatees were reported most often in estuarine habitats...