Manatee deaths used to be a staple in the news media but perhaps due to awareness efforts like that, the rate of manatee deaths reported in Belize's coastal and riverine areas has lessened. That's why biologists hope that a pregnant manatee found dead today is an anomaly. We found them today in the Buttonwood Bay area investigating the death of the pregnant calf. Kevin Andrewin told us that because this is an endangered species, it's important for researchers to know how and why manatees die.
Kevin Andrewin,
"The main we want to find out is the cause of death we have a calf inside so we will try and remove the calf so that we get some samples. So basically what we're doing now is to see if we can remove the calf from the animal and maybe flip over the animal if we have help and then see what is the cause of death, that is our main concern at this moment. The animal is very important to the country, its something that most tour guides make their income from and then we keep track of the death population, to see how many deaths we have, and we do sampling and stuff to see what they eat etc. The reason why we are interested in the cause of death is because sometimes whenever we have an increase of boat population, the manatee is a slow breeder, and so we just don't want them to go into extinction. Its not a animal that we have tagged and that is why we brought our quick tag scanner to scan because most of the animals that we tag have a peg and a number which is like a ID but this one doesn't have any."
