Rescuers find a familiar face on a call in the Keys. This manatee has quite a history
Marine rescuers have a tradition. Whenever they save a manatee that’s either been injured by a boat prop, tangled in fishing line or orphaned by their mother, they name the animal.
Two twin juvenile manatees rescued in 2018 when their mother died from a boat strike were named Millennium and Falcon because the marine biologists who saved them were big “Star Wars” fans.
On Tuesday, rescuers saved a large adult female off the bay side of Islamorada in the Florida Keys. The manatee was handcuffed by fishing line wrapped around both pectoral flippers.
But there was no need to name this one. Sadly, they already were familiar with her.
“Dually,” named years ago because she found herself in a similar predicament, is what rescuers call a “serial entangler.” Since 1997, she’s had to be saved several times from discarded monofilament fishing line, more than once around both pectoral flippers, hence the name.
“Gotta love our serial entanglers,” said Mary Stella, director of media and marketing for the Dolphin Research Center on Grassy Key.
The nonprofit marine mammal park has a rescue team for manatees, dolphins and whales, which took part in the operation to untangle Dually, along with Dolphins Plus, a marine mammal park in Key Largo, the Miami Seaquarium and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
So, when the teams received the report that there was an 11-foot manatee that needed freeing from fishing line, they weren’t shocked to discover it was Dually. The operation did reveal a surprise, however.
She’s going to be a mom.
After removing the spools of tangled line that cut into the manatee’s flippers and disinfecting her wounds, Seaquarium veterinarian Dr. Maya Rodriguez performed a thorough examination, which included an ultrasound.
“We found out she was about seven months pregnant,” Stella said.
Manatees have a gestation period of about a year, according to the Save the Manatee Club.
Stella said she’s not sure how old Dually is, but given she was first rescued in the late 1990s, she’s at least 23 years old. A manatee’s lifespan, if they avoid threats like boat strikes and cold snaps, is 60 years, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Babies stay with their mothers from about one to two years. They stop nursing after a year and are no longer nutritionally dependent on their mothers, but it’s not unusual for them to stick around longer.
Dolphins are dependent on their mothers to eat for longer because they must learn how to hunt fish. Not so for manatees, who feed off seagrass.
“That’s the advantage they have,” Stella said. “They don’t have to go out hunting for food. It’s all around them.”
This story was originally published April 23, 2020 at 4:49 PM.
