our goal today is basically to evaluate an animal we've been treating for about 8 months this is an individual her name is Shante she was hit by a boat it caused massive injuries to her back including her spinal column and spinal cord she has what you'll see is she has a large lump on her back especially coming from the right side to the middle that's where the boat impacted her she actually has a lot of different scars from previous injuries the this one was severe enough to where it's decrease
d her use of her tail to where she can't swim normally it affects her buoyancy somewhat when she can't use her tail so her long-term Outlook is not great for being returned to the wild she had an infection we put her on antibiotics for actually a number of months because her bone was getting infected by that abscess being closed under very thick skin so what we're doing is using a thermographic camera and that allows us to look at inflammation from heat any inflammation that's near the surface i
s going to be re reflected through the body as long as it's close enough and you can see on her that those abscess spots were very hot we measure that to be able to look at the circumference cuz if you've got an abscess you're going to have a larger Limb and over time that should go down as the bones getting better too so today that was 36 cm and it was 38 and before that it was 40 and before that it was 42 so good progress FWC is now really the main rescuer of manatees across most of the state
FWC has developed an approach that has been very successful in having their people respond to animals in trouble so you will see a lot of information related to their rescue relationships so they're a unique resource in the state for not only supporting manatees from prevention of the issues with the laws that are out there but also being able to respond to issues in the field and work in a partnership with all the science groups there have been records of animals with over 13 different patterns
from being struck and eventually the odds will catch up with them if they're out there long enough watercraft is still 25 to 28% of the injuries and deaths and vanities we we still need the public to get behind this and say hey it's not going to hurt me to go a little slower and to watch out for them and to learn that nose coming up may be all you see or that tail is making a footprint in the water and you get these round circles in a path all those things are something the public can get used
to looking for too and slow down and give them a chance they will get out of the way give the chance so we really need the public to be able to see the value of these animals as part of that balance in the environment and assisting us as scientists and biologists to be able to keep track of these things and be able to intervene or mitigate the problems that we're seeing with this Fe species
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