Manatees are such a part of Florida’s environment it’s easy to think they’ve always been here. But have they?
That’s what USF Anthropology professor Tom Pluckhahn and a colleague at George Washington University set out to discover. Are Florida manatees newcomers? Dr. Pluckhahn shared the surprising discovery on WMNF WaveMakers with Janet & Tom Tuesday (12/3).
“Manatees were just not very common before the 1700s,” said Pluckhahn, whose research was recently published in the journal PLOS ONE.
Pluckhahn began his research after working for years at the Crystal River Archaeological State Park and not finding any manatee remains.
“If they were that common you’d expect native americans in the past would have hunted them,” he said, adding that the Spanish never cited them in their historical records and no remains have been found in St. Augustine or Pensacola, Florida’s oldest settlements.
Manatees might have occasionally visited Florida waters but only for short periods before returning home to the Caribbean. They began arriving in large numbers in the 1700s largely because of climate change. Before that, the water was simply too cold for the manatees he said.
Starting in the late 1800s, Florida began protecting manatees, which helped increase the population. And the construction of power plans with warm water outfalls also drew more manatees, Pluckhahn said.
The first good historical record of a manatee came from naturalist William Bartram who found a manatee carcass at what is now called Manatee Springs near Chiefland.
Pluckhahn has devoted most of his research to Indigenous people in Florida and has researched the origins of the word Tampa (there’s no evidence it meant “sticks of fire” to local Indigenous people) and whether ceremonial mounds built by Tocobaga indians centuries ago protects Tampa Bay from hurricanes (in a word, no).
Hear the entire conversation by clicking the link below, going to the WaveMakers archives or by searching for WMNF WaveMakers wherever you listen to podcasts.
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