A floating complication at the Miami International Boat Show: Manatees keep swimming by

A hefty female manatee floated under the shade of the Sea Isle Marina’s Pier 5 on Friday morning, unaware of the frenzy and frustration her respite at the water’s surface caused at the Miami International Boat Show.

“All sea trials are paused in case she goes under,” said Maranda Ealahan, a Nova Southeastern University marine biology student hired as a manatee spotter for the five-day show held around underwater feeding grounds in Biscayne Bay. “The people from the Yamaha tent saw her from across the way, and she kind of made her way up the marina.”

Concerns about boats menacing manatees almost cost the show its permits for on-water test drives for a 2022 event covering more of the Miami waterfront than ever. To win county approval, show organizers agreed to a manatee monitoring operation with rules to halt boat traffic when one is spotted nearby.

That’s turned out to be a fairly regular occurrence, delighting show-goers peering over the docks at the ghostly gray sea cows coming into view and annoying boat brokers forced to keep would-be customers aboard while awaiting the all-clear.

“I’m willing to do a cannonball,” Paul Pancake, a sales executive on a 34-foot powerboat, said as two prospects stood by the helm in the mid-morning sun.

They had been waiting at the Pier 5 slip for about 30 minutes as the female manatee floated in place about 200 feet away, and had another 15 minutes to go before they were allowed to leave.

“The economic impact of a manatee who comes here ... can be extensive,” Pancake said.

With the 2021 show canceled over COVID-19 concerns, the 2022 event is the first needing permits from the administration of Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, who ran in 2020 as an environmentalist.

The county’s Division of Environmental Resources Management recommended a permit to build temporary docks over bay bottom designated “essential manatee habitat,” but wanted to keep boats from leaving slips.

Agency scientists said dozens of test drives — known as “sea trials” — threatened to disrupt manatee feeding and nursing, and worried about the risk of collisions from passing vessels.

Show lobbyists called the demands unreasonable and devastating for an event centered around boat sales. In December, county commissioners overruled DERM and authorized the permit, but with instructions to work with regulators on manatee safeguards.

Along with eliminating two of the three proposed sea-trial routes, show organizers agreed to a set of rules tied to manatee sightings. Among them: halting boat traffic until a manatee swims away or can’t be seen for 30 minutes, said Lisa Spadafina, Natural Resources director in DERM.

“The idea is you’re minimizing the disturbance by keeping the boat traffic at bay while they’re in the area,” she said.

Approval of the Boat Show permit sparked outrage from environmental activists, who organized their own plans to document manatee sightings around the event docks.

Maria “MJ” Algarra, founder of the anti-littering group Clean This Beach Up, said the initial plan was to deploy kayaks around the show waters for independent manatee sightings. “At the end of the day,” she said, ”that was only going to bring more stress.”

Instead, she’s relying on passersby and residents in nearby high-rises to keep an eye out. Joshua Shampaner, whose condominium overlooks Pier 5, regularly captures iPhone footage of swimming manatees even from 18 stories up, and is ready to forward images to Algarra during the show.

“That’s what I’m going to be doing this weekend,” he said. “I’m the lookout.”

DERM also has a boat patrolling off the docks, and at least one scientist on the docks overseeing manatee sightings and compliance with the county rules. But most of the paid manatee spotters work for the Boat Show, which is relying on students recruited by Amy Hirons, a Nova oceanographer and professor who studies manatees and other marine animals.

Her team tracks the day’s manatee sightings on a whiteboard set up by the marina’s sea wall, and a couple dozen students in blue spotter T-shirts prowl the docks to watch and warn.

Manatee sightings and instructions go out on the VHF channel monitored by show captains. Hirons said she’s never had so many people looking for manatees at the same time, and plans to use the observations for research on how spooked manatees get from boat traffic.

By Thursday afternoon, Hirons reported 20 manatee sightings in all — many coming from a pair of drones hovering about 300 feet above.

“We’ve got one adult male at the end of Pier One,” Hirons said shortly after 4 p.m. Thursday, the first day of the show. “There have been quite a number of manatee sightings today.”

On Pier 5, the female manatee that kept Pancake and the other boat sellers waiting opted to swim closer to shore after about 30 minutes.

That meant an alarming moment for spotter Devynne Brown, a marine biology graduate student at Nova Southeastern. From a finger pier, she waved her hand at incoming captains navigating their vessels at slow speed nearby.

“Guys, stop your boat! There’s a manatee,” she said as the two fishing boats crossed each other and continued on their way. “I’m just trying to do my job. And not get a manatee hit.”