Oct 17, 2009 7:05 pm US/Eastern
Ilya, The Manatee, Missing Near Jersey Shore
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
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Ilya, the manatee, pictured here was photographed by a wildlife worker earlier this year.
Boston Globe
Call it reverse mammal migration.
While many in South Florida hail from New Jersey, one wayward manatee recently found its way there and refuses to return. Ilya – a male manatee – has gone missing a day after officials had prepared a rescue plan. That plan had to be delayed due to bad weather on Friday.
"Over the last couple of decades, we've seen an increasing number of manatees going up the east coast during the summertime," said Chuck Underwood, spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Jacksonville. "We thought it was beginning to move back south, but it hasn't been the case."
In early October, the manatee was found in the New Jersey/New York border and sometime after Friday it fed on a case of lettuce and fled into a small river, Underwood said. That's a problem because if it swims through water temperatures that dip below 68 degrees it could cause the sea mammal to succumb to hypothermia. The plan to bring Ilya back to South Florida included boarding the sea cow onto a U.S. Coast Guard cargo plane. But first, they have to find him.
He added that Coast Guard officials and other marine patrol agents have been alerted to watch for the lettuce-loving sea cow.
Ilya was not wearing an electronic tracking device because they are too expensive, running upwards of $3,000, Underwood said.
"We don't know why some animals are able to get the natural trigger to come back south and others don't," Underwood said. He speculated that the sea cow could have found warm water and a source of food.
Members from the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in New Jersey had been feeding the animal and pouring warm water over it to keep it hydrated. The mammal was seen near an oil refinery on Thursday.
The mammals can travel as far as 30 km. (or 18.6 miles per day).
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