HERNANDO COUNTY, Fla. — It’s hard to watch, but the reel Taylor Masnjak recently uploaded to Instagram was posted for good reason.
“I thought it was a good opportunity to share this so that we could talk about it on a larger scale,” she said.
The video, which Masnjak recorded with her drone last March, shows a boater in Hernando County plowing over a group of more than 20 manatees that were gathered in a shallow spot on the Mud River. The manatees scatter frantically before regrouping.
Then, the boater u-turns and drives over the group again at a slower rate of speed. Moments later, another boat quickly glides across the water above an adjacent portion of the large group.
“I couldn’t tell if a manatee was struck or injured in that encounter,” Masnjak said.
Whether they were injured or not, she believes the area’s manatees are under an increasing threat.
Masnjak is the co-owner of Get Up and Go Kayaking Weeki Wachee, an eco-tourism operation that guides visitors on both the Mud and Weeki Wachee Rivers.
Since she moved to the area 12 years ago, she says she has noticed a change: more and more boaters are using the local waterways, which are also frequented by manatees, which, especially in colder weather, seek warmth in the county’s spring-fed rivers.
“That whole estuary supports a pretty good sized population of manatees,” Masnjak said. “With the increase in the number of people that are coming to Florida, and obviously out in our waterways recreating, we’re seeing that increase in Hernando County too.”
According to Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) numbers over the past ten years, at least 11 manatees were killed by boat strikes in Hernando County waters, and three were rescued after boat strike injuries.
“Any manatee hit by boats is too many,” said Tiare Fridrich, a manatee biologist with the Save the Manatee Club. “It’s estimated that one in four manatees is hit upwards of ten times in their lifetime. And over 90% of manatees in Florida have boat scars, so this is a really prevalent issue.”
Both she and Masnjak think it’s time for Hernando County to pursue a Manatee Protection Zone.
The zones, according to FWC, establish rules “to restrict the speed and operation of vessels where necessary to protect manatees from harmful collisions with vessels and from harassment.”
“[Hernando County] needs to reevaluate whether there’s a need for these zones, and as we can see, there obviously is a need,” said Fridrich.
Fridrich has seen the ugly consequences of boat strikes, which she said remain the most common cause of death for Florida manatees.
While boat propellers leave visible deep gashes on manatees’ backs, sometimes the hulls of boats are deadlier. Impact with a hull can snap a manatee’s ribs, which then puncture its lungs. Such an injury is prone to infection and can cause buoyancy issues for the animal.
“I’ve seen photographs of manatee calves come in completely ripped apart by propellers,” she said. “The thought of an animal getting hit by a boat and then having to live on after that is horrifying to the point where I can’t think about it every day.”
She believes protection zones — along with educating people to use spotters and wear polarized sunglasses while boating to help avoid strikes — do work.
According to a Hernando County spokesperson, the county is looking into the idea of a Manatee Protection Zone, but it would require partnerships with groups like the FWC.
Despite the procedural hurdles, Masnjak hopes the county will take action.
As more people move to the area and visit the Weeki Wachee and Mud Rivers, she thinks situations like the one she caught on camera will become the norm without more intervention.
“With the Manatee Protection Zone, it would help us move that one step forward,” she said.
