As noted in Chapter III, the Commission devoted a 

 substantial portion of its Annual Meeting on 11-12 December 

 1987 in Miami, Florida, to manatee-related discussions. 

 Representatives of the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Florida 

 Department of Natural Resources, and other agencies and 

 organizations involved in the West Indian manatee recovery 

 program participated in the meeting. The participants agreed, 

 among other things, on the need for: identifying and 

 undertaking priority manatee research; coordinating and 

 expanding public information and education programs; and 

 developing a plan for protecting manatee habitat along the 

 east coast of Florida and Georgia. To help meet these 

 objectives, the Commission contracted for the activities 

 described below. 



Assessment of the Effects of Manatee Grazing on Seagrasses in 

 Hobe and Jupiter Sounds, Florida 

 (J. A. Powell, Gainesville, Florida) 



Manatees affect and are affected by the habitat in which 

 they live. The distribution, abundance, and productivity of 

 seagrasses eaten by manatees may be affected, for example, by 

 the nature and extent of manatee grazing as well as by human 

 activities. The objective of this study is to determine the 

 possible effects of West Indian manatees on seagrass beds in 

 the vicinity of power plants where large groups of manatees 

 spend the winter. To meet the study objective, the contractor 

 is: conducting aerial and boat surveys to determine when and 

 where manatees feed in Hobe and Jupiter Sounds during the 

 winter months; observing feeding manatees and establishing 

 underwater study plots in feeding areas to determine how 

 manatee foraging patterns affect the species composition, 

 density, and productivity of seagrasses in the study areas; 

 and establishing a protocol for quarterly monitoring of selected 

 seagrass beds impacted by feeding manatees. The report, 

 expected in June 1989, will help in evaluating the cumulative 

 effects of manatee feeding and human activities, including 

 increased sedimentation resulting from boat traffic in critical 

 manatee feeding areas, on seagrass production and maintenance. 



Pilot Study on "DNA Fingerprinting" of Manatees 



(0. Ryder, Ph.D., The Zoological Society of San Diego, San 



Diego, California) 



Techniques used in molecular biology, especially analysis 

 of hypervariable mini-satellite DNA ("DNA fingerprinting"), 

 may be useful for determining genetic variability, identifying 

 kinship relationships, and assessing reproductive success of 

 manatees and other marine mammals. Such information is 

 necessary to understand population biology and to effectively 



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