Today’s Entry: I was glad to hear the “lettuce” program to feed the manatees is starting to work. How much do they need? Since they’re veg heads and huge, I’d think that would be a lot of lettuce!
Bottom Line: Yeah, it is a lot of lettuce that’s needed for each manatee every day. According to a University of Florida study, Manatees need to eat a tenth of their body weight each day. The average adult West Indian manatee, Florida’s manatees, weigh 990 pounds. That means the average manatee needs 99 pounds of food per day! That’s a lot of lettuce. That’s also obviously a huge amount of seagrass. The current program is doling out 3,000 pounds of the preferred lettuce per day. While that sounds like a lot of lettuce, that’s only enough to feed 30 manatees per day.
In an effort to combat the record manatee deaths due to starvation, FWC started a lettuce feeding initiative aimed at combating the starvation crisis. The purpose of the program is two-fold. Directly feeding manatees addresses the needs of the lettuce eating manatees, but it also reduces demand on the remaining seagrass in Florida’s estuaries. FWC began the program at FPL’s Clean Energy plant in Cocoa Beach, which is a popular winter gathering ground for manatees. After initial reporting that the manatees were reluctant to feast on the lettuce, they’ve since been taking to it with as many as 175 manatees monitored eating on Friday.
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