Posted on 01/04/2007 4:38:24 PM PST by mcg2000
The big guy was hanging out in the warm waters by the refinery. Kinda like when I take warm towels out of the dryer. Kids and cats appear to snuggle up under the pile. There is nothing like that feeling!
Grad school. Introduced species were a hot topic in the marine sciences.
ROFLMAO!
From Wikipedia:
Manatees typically inhabit warm, shallow, coastal estuarine waters. Manatees often congregate near power plants, which warm the waters. Some have become reliant on this source of unnatural heat and have ceased migrating to warmer waters. Some power plants have recently been closing and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is trying to find a new way to heat the water for these manatees.
The main water treatment plant in Guyana has four manatees that keep storage canals clear of weeds.
The natural source for warm waters for manatees during the winter is spring fed rivers. The West Indian Manatee migrates into Florida rivers such as the Crystal River, The Homosassa River and The Chassawohitzka River. The head springs of these rivers maintain a water temperature of 72 degrees year round. During the winter months, November to March, approximately 400 West Indian Manatees (According to the National Wildlife Refuge Service) congregate in the rivers in Citrus County, Florida.
Manatees have been spotted as far north as Cape Cod, and as recently as the late summer of 2006, one made it up to New York City and Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay, as cited by the Boston Globe. According to Memphis, Tennessee's Commercial Appeal newspaper, one manatee was spotted in the Wolf River harbor near the Mississippi River in downtown Memphis, Tennessee, on October 23, 2006, though it was later found ten miles downriver in McKellar Lake.[5]
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