METHODS & PRELIMINARY RESULTS

Objective 3: Develop a site-specific photo-id catalog.





During the spring season, attempts were made to photograph individual manatees underwater using a Nikonos camera. Due to low success, the Nikonos was replaced with a JVC digital video for the summer season. Video analysis is still in progress, but preliminary results are quite promising. The photographs to the left were taken with the Nikonos in Bannister Bogue on 4 February 1999.

When a manatee is sighted, the boat is stopped immediately. The boat operator then drifts or poles to within 100 m of the animal. IF the manatee is not disturbed by our presence, and IF conditions warrant, the researcher enters the water and slowly snorkels towards the manatee. Photographs are taken according to the Florida Manatee Individual Photo-identification System protocol (Beck and Reid 1995). Ideally, we want to photograph the entire animal: dorsal, ventral, and both lateral sides, plus the paddle and the face. The first photograph in this series captures the face, the right lateral, and the anterior dorsal areas. The second photograph captures the posterior dorsal area.

Previous research by Greg Smith indicates that many manatees can be identified by nicks around the edges of the tail paddle. A similar method is used to identify bottlenose dolphins via nicks on their dorsal fins. Although this animal has no remarkable nicks out of the paddle, it does have 3 barnacles which can be used for short term identification (hours - days). Barnacles, however, fall off when the manatee enters fresh water - therefore we cannot rely on them for long term identification. Similarly, the scar like patterns on this animal are actually algae and can only be used in the very short term.


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Copyright 1999 Caryn Self Sullivan, Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-2258. The research presented in this poster was funded by The Oceanic Society of San Francisco, CA 94123 and supported by an NSF Graduate Fellowship. Permission to print and reproduce these 6 poster pages is hereby granted for non-profit educational use, only.