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Emails reveal concerns among refuge employees regarding people swimming with manatees

 
A manatee inspects Julie Barney, right, and her mother, Laura Rogers, near Three Sisters Springs. The Crystal River Refuge is preparing new rules for interaction with manatees.
A manatee inspects Julie Barney, right, and her mother, Laura Rogers, near Three Sisters Springs. The Crystal River Refuge is preparing new rules for interaction with manatees.
Published April 11, 2015

CRYSTAL RIVER — For Michael Lusk, it was a bizarre and unpleasant encounter he had with some angry people and a woman in a pink chiffon dress that made him wonder whether hands-on, up-close encounters with manatees had finally crossed the line at the most popular place in the world to swim with the endangered mammals.

Lusk, who spent four years as manager of the Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge, ran into the entourage of photographers and a fashion model at Three Sisters Springs as the model posed with resting manatees last year. He warned them that if they disturbed a sleeping manatee, they were breaking the law.

His thank-you was a profane verbal attack.

Lusk told his superiors in an email that uneducated and unsupervised swimmers were violating the Endangered Species Act on a regular basis. Since swimming with manatees has the blessing of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Lusk concluded that if the agency couldn't devote sufficient resources to prevent the harassment, "The service should close the springs while manatees are present.''

The comments from Lusk and other refuge employees are the first public look at how those charged with protecting the Crystal River manatee population doubt the viability of the swim-with-manatees program at Three Sisters Springs under the existing rules and conditions.

The emails were obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a national organization, through the federal Freedom of Information Act and released to the Tampa Bay Times.

The comments mirror larger concerns voiced by PEER in its March 9 notice that it intends to sue if the wildlife service doesn't improve manatee safeguards and end swim-with-manatees activities statewide within 60 days, a deadline now just weeks away.

Citing Lusk's email, PEER attorney Laura Dumais noted, "A professional in the best position to know admits that the service has no effective control of swim-with programs to protect manatees from harassment.''

PEER accuses the agency of violating both the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which requires people to stay at least 10 feet away from marine mammals, and is critical of the fact that, while the service collects harassment data, it doesn't analyze it.

"Perhaps the service is afraid that if it were to reflect on what is taking place, it would actually have to do something about it,'' Dumais said.

Ever since the Fish and Wildlife Service established the Crystal River refuge to protect manatees in 1983, the agency has faced a balancing act of safeguarding the animals and providing public access. Crystal River is the only place where the federal government sanctions swimming with manatees, though other programs have popped up around the state.

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Videos of people violating the law by riding, chasing and separating manatee calves from their mothers at Crystal River have circulated on the Internet for a decade. Harassment can be as simple as changing a manatee's behavior.

Over the years, the pressure on manatees has become more severe, with the number of visitors to the area ballooning from about 67,000 in 2010 to 265,000 in 2014 and the number of manatees growing to as many as a record 1,000 that were counted earlier this year. Manatees, and the tourism connected with them, are credited for bringing $20 million to $30 million into local coffers annually.

More people and more manatees have put more pressure on special areas such as Three Sisters Springs, one of the rare spots where the spring water is still clear enough for a good viewing and warm enough to sustain the lives of cold-sensitive manatees when wintertime temperatures drop in the Gulf of Mexico.

To deal with the continual conflicts, Andrew Gude, the current manager of the Crystal River refuge, put in place temporary rules at Three Sisters this winter, including closing two lobes of the springs and prohibiting kayaks and canoes in the springs themselves. In addition, nearly two dozen times this past winter, Gude used temperature and tidal information to shut down the springs to the public altogether.

Lusk, Gude's predecessor, is no fan of the idea of splitting up Three Sisters because that would concentrate more people in an even smaller area and make manatees swim through people to get in and out.

"Honestly, I wish they would just shut it down,'' he told a former co-worker at the refuge in an email.

Gude said emails detailing service employees' concerns are shoptalk and do not represent official policy. He said the agency will respond formally to the PEER lawsuit threat.