August 23, 2006
Manatee discovered in Falmouth waters
By DOUG FRASER
STAFF WRITER
In Rhode Island, late summer and early fall are known as ''funny fish'' season. Tropical fish species that have traveled north with the Gulf Stream drift into coastal waters when ocean storms break off a splinter of warm water and drive it to shore.
But spotting an African pompano, a lion fish, or a wahoo pales in comparison with finding a manatee, a 1,000-pound seagoing distant relative of the elephant that typically isn't found any further north than the southeastern United States.
Last Thursday, Brian Von Herzen was snorkeling in the shallow waters of Falmouth's Gansett Harbor looking for a lost wallet when he came across an adult manatee munching eelgrass, he said yesterday. Von Herzen swam for 15 minutes within arm's length of the manatee, which he estimated at 10 to 12 feet long, and weighing 1,000 to 1,200 pounds. A second eyewitness also saw the manatee as it passed under the bow of his sailboat, which was anchored in the harbor.
Von Herzen, who lives in Carson City, Nev., is on the Cape visiting his parents in Woods Hole. He does aerial and underwater videography professionally and has photographed manatees in the past.
''It was a manatee, no doubt in my mind,'' Von Herzen said.
Town officials said they are inclined to believe the eyewitnesses' accounts.
''We got a call from (Von Herzen), that it was a manatee he had seen while snorkeling,'' said Charles Martinsen, assistant director of the town Department of Natural Resources. Martinsen, Department of Natural Resources director Mark Patten and another employee searched for the large mammal but could not find it. But Martinsen said both men were credible.
Martinsen said the harbor is open to the sea, and it would be easy for a manatee to get back out to the deeper water of Buzzards Bay.
C.T. Harry, assistant stranding coordinator for the Cape Cod Stranding Network, said the two men were also interviewed by his organization and they believed the pair had seen a manatee. If so, it was the first ever seen in Massachusetts waters and the furthest north of any previous manatee sighting, said U.S. Geological Survey spokeswoman Hannah Hamilton.
Hamilton works at the USGS Florida Integrated Science Centers in Gainesville, Fla., which does extensive research on manatees.
Hamilton said USGS scientists believe it could be the same animal that has been seen along the East Coast all summer, beginning with a sighting in Maryland on July 11, one in Delaware later that week, a stint off New Jersey a week later, and a week in New York at the beginning of this month.
Just yesterday, a manatee was spotted in Greenwich Bay, near Warwick, R.I., drinking from a freshwater runoff pipe, according to The Associated Press.
Manatees are a federally listed endangered species. There are estimated to be between 3,000 and 4,000 left in their primary habitat area that stretches from the southeastern U.S. to the rivers and coastline of South America.
Hamilton said scientists are now theorizing that adult males like to wander in summer, looking for greener pastures.
That's what may be happening with the most famous wanderer, Chessie. The big male, whose movements are tracked by a satellite tag attached after he was rescued from cold water in the Chesapeake Bay in 1994, leaves every spring to head north. Chessie travels 25 to 30 miles a day and has gone as far north as Point Judith, R.I.
Hamilton said that examination of a video of the manatee off Warwick revealed that it was a manatee that had not been tracked by scientists in the past.
Doug Fraser can be reached at
dfraser@capecodonline.com.
(Published: August 23, 2006)
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