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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
Saving starving manatees2 will mean saving this crucial lagoon3 habitat
Not long ago, seagrass spanned the 156-mile Indian River Lagoon like a vast underwater meadow, nourished by sunlight that reached through the crystalline water. The lagoon, an estuary5 on Florida's east coast, is among the most biodiverse on the continent, and has been a crucial habitat for manatees. But today its underwater meadow is gone.
Decades of nutrient6 pollution flowing from fast-growing communities and farm lands along the lagoon's shores have left the water cloudy with harmful algal blooms, which can prevent sunlight from reaching the seagrass below. In parts of the lagoon as much as 96 percent of the seagrass has been lost, leading to a record die-off of some 1,100 manatees in Florida last year.
But a quick boat trip from the city of Satellite Beach, in one spot where the lagoon water laps at the thick mangroves of a tiny island, a small but vital effort is underway to regrow the seagrass.
From an idling pontoon, Nicholas Frank Sanzone, the city's environmental programs coordinator7, says some 13,500 seagrass plugs were planted last year within this one-acre site, along with oysters8 and clams9 to serve as natural water filters. The effort was successful, until an animal – perhaps a manatee1, he says – swept in and ate all the seagrass.
"If we can get seagrass to grow here," Sanzone says, "the odds10 are that we can get it to grow in similar locations throughout the lagoon."
Cleaning up the polluted lagoon could take decades and cost billions
Florida's staggering manatee die-off now is projected to last for years, and wildlife agencies are bracing11 for the worst by expanding their rescue and rehabilitation12 program. They have resorted to providing supplemental lettuce13 for starving manatees. Already this year some 420 are dead in Florida, a number that tracks closely with this time last year.
But the wildlife agencies say they have no way of measuring how effective the lettuce has been at preventing more deaths and acknowledge the manatees need a lot more than lettuce. Saving the federally protected manatees, they say, means saving this habitat, a monumental effort.
The Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program, administered by the Environmental Protection Agency, estimates a comprehensive restoration of the lagoon would cost $5 billion and take some 20 to 30 years to complete.
"Nobody has done this scale of restoration, from a system this impacted," says Virginia Barker, director of Brevard County's Natural Resources Management Department.
Some 70 percent of the Indian River Lagoon is situated14 in Brevard County, home to the Kennedy Space Center. Of the six counties where the lagoon flows Brevard has offered up the most money for restoration at $542 million, funded by a half-cent sales tax voters approved after a widespread fish kill in 2016.
The restoration involves wastewater treatment plant upgrades, septic-to-sewer conversions15, hundreds of stormwater treatment projects and dredging from the lagoon's bottom vast amounts of muck representing decades of accumulated debris16 associated with fish and seagrass die-offs.
Barker says the effort is showing promise, but it was developed at a time when seagrass still was present in large swaths of the lagoon.
"The amount of nutrient reduction that is needed to flip17 that system back to a seagrass-dominated, oligotrophic system may be much more than what the prior modeling had indicated," she says. An oligotrophic system is one that is more pristine18 with little to no nutrient pollution.
"We have a dust bowl underwater," Barker says. "So how do you restore tens of thousands of acres of seagrass to an underwater dust bowl, where there's nothing to hold those sediments19 still?"
There are also fears that the harmful algal blooms could get worse as water temperatures warm with climate change.
Many more species than manatee are being harmed
The Florida Legislature has budgeted millions of dollars for manatee habitat restoration. The funding will go toward a series of projects, several of them involving re-growing seagrass in the Indian River Lagoon, including at Satellite Beach. The lagoon also gets funding from federal and state agencies including the EPA, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, St. Johns River Water Management District and South Florida Water Management District.
The infrastructure20 measure President Biden signed into law in November includes money for an Everglades restoration project aimed at improving flows into the southern part of the lagoon.
But the costs associated with wastewater treatment plant upgrades and septic-to-sewer conversions are enormous, and without dedicated21 funding for that, real change will be difficult, Barker says. Even simply creating such a long-term plan for restoration is a challenge.
"Why would you take the limited dollars that you have to do that design and permitting if you have no idea whether you're going to be able to come up with the construction funds three to five years down the road, when you're ready for that stage of the process," she says.
The Save the Manatee Club, Center for Biological Diversity and Defenders22 of Wildlife have sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in federal court over the manatees' habitat. The groups want the federal agency to update and strengthen habitat protections under the Endangered Species Act that they say have not been revised since 1976. They've also filed a notice of intent to sue the EPA over water pollution, primarily in the Indian River Lagoon.
Pat Rose is executive director of the Save the Manatee Club and an aquatic23 biologist who has spent 40 years trying to help the marine24 mammals. He says the Indian River Lagoon's needs are urgent because the widespread loss of seagrass also affects many other species, including sea turtles and even dolphins, who have fewer fish to eat."This is a situation we thought never would happen," he says, "and it certainly never should have happened."
This story is a collaboration25 between Inside Climate News and WMFE Orlando, a member of ICN's National Reporting Network-Southeast.
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manatee
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n.海牛 | |
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manatees
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n.海牛(水生哺乳动物,体宽扁,尾圆,有鳃状肢)( manatee的名词复数 ) | |
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lagoon
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n.泻湖,咸水湖 | |
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transcript
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n.抄本,誊本,副本,肄业证书 | |
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estuary
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n.河口,江口 | |
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nutrient
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adj.营养的,滋养的;n.营养物,营养品 | |
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7
coordinator
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n.协调人 | |
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oysters
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牡蛎( oyster的名词复数 ) | |
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clams
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n.蛤;蚌,蛤( clam的名词复数 )v.(在沙滩上)挖蛤( clam的第三人称单数 ) | |
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10
odds
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n.让步,机率,可能性,比率;胜败优劣之别 | |
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11
bracing
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adj.令人振奋的 | |
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rehabilitation
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n.康复,悔过自新,修复,复兴,复职,复位 | |
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13
lettuce
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n.莴苣;生菜 | |
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14
situated
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adj.坐落在...的,处于某种境地的 | |
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15
conversions
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变换( conversion的名词复数 ); (宗教、信仰等)彻底改变; (尤指为居住而)改建的房屋; 橄榄球(触地得分后再把球射中球门的)附加得分 | |
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16
debris
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n.瓦砾堆,废墟,碎片 | |
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flip
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vt.快速翻动;轻抛;轻拍;n.轻抛;adj.轻浮的 | |
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pristine
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adj.原来的,古时的,原始的,纯净的,无垢的 | |
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sediments
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沉淀物( sediment的名词复数 ); 沉积物 | |
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infrastructure
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n.下部构造,下部组织,基础结构,基础设施 | |
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dedicated
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adj.一心一意的;献身的;热诚的 | |
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defenders
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n.防御者( defender的名词复数 );守卫者;保护者;辩护者 | |
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23
aquatic
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adj.水生的,水栖的 | |
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24
marine
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adj.海的;海生的;航海的;海事的;n.水兵 | |
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collaboration
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n.合作,协作;勾结 | |
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