Florida loves its manatees here in
Crystal River it’s practically an
obsession nearly everywhere you look
there’s a manatee looking back at you
insurance on buildings and even on
license plates but despite their
popularity times are tough for these
loveable beasts recent surveys show that
Florida’s manatee population is steadily
declining and today there may be less
than 3500 left in the wild of those that
remain four out of five bear the scars
of encounters with boat propellers but
what’s most puzzling is why manatees
don’t swim away from the noisy motors of
oncoming boats dr. Edmund Gerstein has
been puzzling over this question for
nearly three decades ad began to unravel
the mysteries with the help of two
captive red manatees trained to perform
simple tasks oh yes a simple question is
it possible that manatee has can’t hear
the boats or if they can’t hear them
they can’t tell which direction they’re
coming from so my wife and I actually
set up a series of experiments to test
the manatees hearing to see you exactly
what they can hear what the Gerstein is
discovered was astonishing the manatees
seemed confused by the low-frequency
sounds made by motor boats but when
confronted with certain high pitched
sounds they responded almost instantly
what we found was that manatees have
very good hearing but their hearing is
it at higher frequencies than what
anyone expected actually the animals
hear fairly poorly at low frequencies
and unfortunately for them slow moving
boats produce primarily very low
frequencies now after nearly 20 years of
research Eddie and his wife Laura have
an innovative idea could they develop an
alarm that exploits the manatees best
hearing abilities flashcards are in now
it’s time to put it to the test
boy ones all set together to plummet and
his team has secured special permits to
conduct trials in the restricted
waterways near NASA’s Cape Canaveral the
team sets buoys in the water
equipped with underwater microphones and
digital sound recorders
being naturally inquisitive manatees
soon move in to inspect the boys and
when they do ed and his team approach
them in boats the drivers are trained to
prevent collisions but will they need to
the boats are equipped with new alarms
they are emitting a high-pitched sound
that EDD believes the manatees will hear
as you can see one camera is capturing
the wide-angle view back in the lab Eden
has assisted Josiah review video of the
experiments normally manatees will not
move to avoid a boat until the very last
moment which is often too late
but when Ed’s vessel sounds the alarm
the manatees reaction is clear see the
animal coming to frame here yeah look at
that and he starts to orient at about
what would you say that is 75 feet about
24 meters it’s great now he’s taking off
rather quickly yeah this is a successful
Armand yeah that’s really good and
definitely tell the animal reacts again
and again and began we’ve got 17 alarm
runs and for those alarms we got a
hundred percent reaction we got animus
reacting way before the boat gets there
and we’ve got over 65 silent runs we’re
9 B 7 percent of the time the animals
haven’t reacted all the alarm is a
success and hopes of Sunday all boats
and manatee filled waters will be
equipped with similar devices in a sense
if we were to put this device on the
boat which would be very inexpensive
only about 125 dollars it’s a user based
tax that the boaters would gladly pay if
they could put this on their boat and
maybe get to an area a little bit
quicker and more importantly protect the
animal as they’re going
Crystal River it’s practically an
obsession nearly everywhere you look
there’s a manatee looking back at you
insurance on buildings and even on
license plates but despite their
popularity times are tough for these
loveable beasts recent surveys show that
Florida’s manatee population is steadily
declining and today there may be less
than 3500 left in the wild of those that
remain four out of five bear the scars
of encounters with boat propellers but
what’s most puzzling is why manatees
don’t swim away from the noisy motors of
oncoming boats dr. Edmund Gerstein has
been puzzling over this question for
nearly three decades ad began to unravel
the mysteries with the help of two
captive red manatees trained to perform
simple tasks oh yes a simple question is
it possible that manatee has can’t hear
the boats or if they can’t hear them
they can’t tell which direction they’re
coming from so my wife and I actually
set up a series of experiments to test
the manatees hearing to see you exactly
what they can hear what the Gerstein is
discovered was astonishing the manatees
seemed confused by the low-frequency
sounds made by motor boats but when
confronted with certain high pitched
sounds they responded almost instantly
what we found was that manatees have
very good hearing but their hearing is
it at higher frequencies than what
anyone expected actually the animals
hear fairly poorly at low frequencies
and unfortunately for them slow moving
boats produce primarily very low
frequencies now after nearly 20 years of
research Eddie and his wife Laura have
an innovative idea could they develop an
alarm that exploits the manatees best
hearing abilities flashcards are in now
it’s time to put it to the test
boy ones all set together to plummet and
his team has secured special permits to
conduct trials in the restricted
waterways near NASA’s Cape Canaveral the
team sets buoys in the water
equipped with underwater microphones and
digital sound recorders
being naturally inquisitive manatees
soon move in to inspect the boys and
when they do ed and his team approach
them in boats the drivers are trained to
prevent collisions but will they need to
the boats are equipped with new alarms
they are emitting a high-pitched sound
that EDD believes the manatees will hear
as you can see one camera is capturing
the wide-angle view back in the lab Eden
has assisted Josiah review video of the
experiments normally manatees will not
move to avoid a boat until the very last
moment which is often too late
but when Ed’s vessel sounds the alarm
the manatees reaction is clear see the
animal coming to frame here yeah look at
that and he starts to orient at about
what would you say that is 75 feet about
24 meters it’s great now he’s taking off
rather quickly yeah this is a successful
Armand yeah that’s really good and
definitely tell the animal reacts again
and again and began we’ve got 17 alarm
runs and for those alarms we got a
hundred percent reaction we got animus
reacting way before the boat gets there
and we’ve got over 65 silent runs we’re
9 B 7 percent of the time the animals
haven’t reacted all the alarm is a
success and hopes of Sunday all boats
and manatee filled waters will be
equipped with similar devices in a sense
if we were to put this device on the
boat which would be very inexpensive
only about 125 dollars it’s a user based
tax that the boaters would gladly pay if
they could put this on their boat and
maybe get to an area a little bit
quicker and more importantly protect the
animal as they’re going
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