The new West Indian manatee range data was finalized in November 2020. The original data have downloaded falls under the IUCN Red List Terms and Conditions of Use which can be viewed on the IUCN Red List website at www.iucnredlist.org/terms/terms-of-use. For the Florida manatee, the previous range map was revised significantly to extend north to Delaware and west to Texas to reflect new data and documented warm season distribution. West Indian manatees can be found along the coastal and inland waters of the southern United States, throughout the Caribbean islands and along the eastern coasts of Mexico and Central America and the northern coast of South America.

GIS shapefile of recovered or verified manatee carcass locations within Florida from April 1974 through to the latest available spatially verified data. Locations are based both on coordinates provided by field staff (gathered either by GPS or by using navigation charts to ascertain latitudes and longitudes) and maps provided by the field staff. FWRI GIS staff in the Marine Mammal subsection verify that the provided coordinates match the intent of the plotted location. Points representing carcass locations were entered into a GIS using a digital shoreline basemap taken largely from NOAA navigation charts (1:40,000) and from USGS quadrangles (1:24,000) or in reference to the latest available NAIP aerial imagery when the data were processed. The scale is considered to be 1:40,000.

The word “synoptic” means presenting a general view of the whole. The current manatee synoptic survey is a count of manatees over a broad area. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) uses these surveys to obtain a general count of manatees statewide. The FWC coordinates an interagency team that conducts the synoptic surveys from one to three times each year (weather permitting). The synoptic surveys are conducted in winter and cover all of the known wintering habitats of manatees in Florida. The survey is conducted to meet Florida state statute 370.12 (4), which requires an annual, impartial, scientific benchmark census of the manatee population. From 1991 through 2019, the counts have been conducted 33 times. These statewide, interagency surveys are currently conducted during the coldest weather of the year (January through March) when manatees move to warm-water sites, such as natural springs, thermal discharges from power and industrial plants, and deep canals. The ideal conditions for the current synoptic survey are cool weather, following a prolonged period of cold weather (usually following multiple cold fronts), low winds, and bright sunshine. Weather conditions and manatee behavior during the survey have a large effect on the synoptic counts. For that reason, the counts are used as indicators of relative abundance within a year and are not suitable for assessing long-term population trends. Counts can vary depending on whether it is warm or cold, sunny or cloudy, calm or windy. Manatees are more easily counted a few days after a cold front when it is slightly warmer, clear, and windless. A warming trend with sunny, windless conditions following cold weather increases the likelihood that manatees will be resting at the water's surface, where observers can easily spot them.

Manatee County, FL has a C wealth grade. Median household income: $75,977. Unemployment rate: 5.0%. Income grows 5.7% yearly.

Polygon of Kings Bay Manatee Refuge.Please contact GIS.Librarian@FloridaDEP.gov for more information.

Link to the ScienceBase Item Summary page for the item described by this metadata record. Service Protocol: Link to the ScienceBase Item Summary page for the item described by this metadata record. Application Profile: Web Browser. Link Function: information

The watershed of the Ten Thousand Islands (TTI) estuary has been substantially altered through the construction of canals and roads for the Southern Golden Gate Estates (SGGE), Barron River Canal, and U.S. 41 (Tamiami Trail). Two restoration projects designed to improve freshwater delivery to the estuary are the Picayune Strand Restoration Project, which includes the Southern Golden Gate Estates, and the Tamiami Trail Culverts Project; both are part of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). To address hydrologic information needs critical for monitoring the effects of these restoration projects, CERP RECOVER, through the Monitoring and Assessment Plan (MAP), partnered with the U.S. Geological Survey in October 2006 to characterize freshwater outflows from the rivers. This project is an extension of the CERP Picayune Strand - Monitoring and Assessing Effects of the Picayune Strand Restoration Project on the Florida Manatee: Hydrological Monitoring and Analysis.

Aerial distribution surveys are used by marine mammal biologists from FWC and other agencies to determine the seasonal distribution of manatees. Most surveys are conducted from small, four-seat, high-winged airplanes (Cessna 172 or 182) flying at a height of 500-1000 ft at a speed of 70-90 kts. Small helicopters may be used instead of fixed wing aircraft in urban areas or where waters are particularly opaque and hovering may be required. Surveys are flown along a standardized, theoretical flight route, which was designed to cover all likely manatee habitats in the study area. This "theoretical flight path" indicates the area that was covered during each survey, but it may not be the actual flight route flown on every survey. GPS tracklines recorded during surveys may be available for some flights. The survey area includes the largest estuary in Florida, which borders Pinellas, Hillsborough, and Manatee counties on Florida’s west coast. Tampa Bay consists of mostly shallow water (average 3m) with Egmont Channel (27m) and the main dredged shipping channels (13m). Five rivers enter the Bay: Hillsborough, Alafia, Little Manatee, Manatee, and Braden rivers. The area includes large expanses of seagrass in Boca Ciega Bay and Anna Maria Sound. Many undeveloped areas under state or federal management were part of the study area, including Egmont Key, Passage Key, and Pinellas national wildlife refuge.

Aerial distribution surveys are used by marine mammal biologists from FWC and other agencies to determine the seasonal distribution of manatees. Most surveys are conducted from small, four-seat, high-winged airplanes (Cessna 172 or 182) flying at a height of 500-1000 ft at a speed of 70-90 kts. Small helicopters may be used instead of fixed wing aircraft in urban areas or where waters are particularly opaque and hovering may be required. Flights are usually four hours long and are most commonly flown every two weeks for one year. The surveys are designed to maximize the manatee counts by concentrating on shallow nearshore waters around the state where manatees and their primary food source, sea grasses, are located. Flight paths curve parallel to the shoreline, and the airplane circles when manatees are spotted until a count of the number of animals in each group is obtained. Offshore waters are usually not surveyed. Dolphin and sea turtle sightings are recorded opportunistically. All aerial data are recorded on paper maps and entered into a GIS shapefile for spatial analysis. GIS is a computer software system for representing data spatially and for conducting spatial analyses. Surveys of St. Johns and Putnam Counties were flown twice a month from June 1994 to June 1995. FWC staff members were observers for these flights. The survey area includes all waters of St. Johns River in Duval, Clay, St. Johns and Putnam counties from the southwestern portion of Duval County south to the Cross-Florida Barge Canal, which is south of Palatka and Little Lake George. Doctors Lake, Julington, Durbin, Black, Trout, Six-Mile, Deep, and Rice creeks; the Cross-Florida Barge Canal; and creeks and waterways around the Seven Sisters Islands and Murphy Islands were included in the survey.

The trichechus manatus (West Indian Manatee) faces many threats, including toxic red tide and other algal blooms, boating accidents, other human harassment like fishing gear entanglement, climate change, and loss of warm water habitat. This map displays possible threats to their habitat by presenting critical manatee habitat in relation to polluted waters, developed areas, and harmful algal blooms. Hydrology is included to create a cohesive representation of waterways that may affect the manatee habitats. To view the areas of polluted water, the viewer must scale down. Options to adjust layer visibility is available for anyone interested in a specific set of threats. In addition, if anyone is interested on ways to help protect these sweet, adorable gray blobs of the sea, please consider checking out the non-profit Save the Manatee Club website to learn more.

Restoration of the Everglades requires the implementation of many components staged temporally and spatially with results realized on different time and spatial scales. Due to extensive feeding and migratory patterns of manatees, restoration effects on Florida manatees must be modeled monitored over large time and space scales. U.S. Geological Survey efforts have focused on collecting manatee movement data throughout the Ten Thousand Islands (TTI) region, and developing an individual-based model for manatees to illustrate manatee responses to changes in hydrology related to the Picayune Strand Restoration Project (PSRP). This research on manatees is part of the USGS Southeast Ecological Science Center’s (SECSC), Sirernia research project. This report serves as an archive of processed single-beam bathymetry data that were collected in Ten Thousand Islands, Florida in 2009. Geographic information system data products include a XYZ data, bathymetric contours, and USGS quadrangle map. Additional files include formal Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) metadata.

The South Florida Seagrass Fish and Invertebrate Assessment Network (FIAN) is an element of the Monitoring and Assessment Plan (MAP) a part of RECOVER, the Restoration, Coordination and Verification Program of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). FIAN is an element of the Southern Coastal System module of MAP (MAP activities 3.2.3.5 and 3.2.4.5). FIAN monitors seagrass-associated fish and invertebrate (penaeid and caridean shrimp and crabs) communities present in shallow waters of South Florida; the pink shrimp, Farfantepenaeus duorarum, as an indicator of restoration success, is a species of special interest. FIAN represents the first region-wide view of these communities and the pink shrimp.

The FIAN monitoring component of the Southern Estuaries module of MAP is designed to support the four broad objectives of MAP: (1) to establish a pre-CERP reference state, including variability, for each of the performance measures; (2) to determine the status and trends in the performance measures; (3) to detect unexpected responses of the ecosystem to changes in stressors resulting from CERP activities; and (4) to support scientific investigations designed to increase ecosystem understanding, cause-and-effect, and interpretation of unanticipated results.

The data developed in FIAN will be used to evaluate the success of CERP by contributing to the assessment of the estuarine response to restoration-related modifications to upstream hydrology in the freshwater Everglades. At present, FIAN provides input to the pink shrimp performance measure (RECOVER, 2004; SFWMD 2005). The pink shrimp emerged as an ecosystem attribute to be monitored from the Florida and Biscayne Bay conceptual ecological models. More generally these data will be used to relate seagrass-associated faunal communities to habitat and environmental conditions in South Florida shallow water estuaries.

FIAN is closely coupled with the MAP seagrass monitoring project FHAP-SF and other seagrass monitoring programs in South Florida, e.g. DERM. Close coupling with seagrass monitoring recognizes the importance of shallow seagrass systems to the function of coastal waters and their vulnerability to anthropogenic change. Estuaries downstream from CERP projects will be affected by changes in the quantity, timing, and distribution of freshwater inflows. Associated changes in estuarine salinity regimes and subsequent, long-term, changes in benthic vegetation are anticipated. We hypothesize that abundance and diversity of seagrass-associated fish and invertebrates including the pink shrimp in nearshore waters of South Florida will increase as the overlap of favorable salinity conditions with favorable seagrass/algal habitat increase.

Aerial distribution surveys are used by marine mammal biologists from Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission-Fish and Wildlife Research Institute (FWC-FWRI) and other agencies to determine the seasonal distribution of manatees. Most surveys are conducted from small, four-seat, high-winged airplanes (Cessna 172 or 182) flying at a height of 500-1000 ft at a speed of 70-90 kts. This survey was conducted by one aircraft mostly following historical flight paths used for past county-wide distribution surveys. However, some changes were made to shorten the flight route or to cover areas not flown in previous surveys. Flight paths generally curved parallel to the shoreline, and the airplane circled when manatees were spotted until a count of the number of animals in each group was obtained. Circling was limited to 3 passes unless a group was unusually large and aerial photos were used in some cases to confirm counts. Sightings data were recorded on paper maps and entered into a GIS shapefile for spatial analysis using NAIP 2023 imagery and recorded flight paths as a reference. GIS is a computer software system for representing data spatially and for conducting spatial analyses. This dataset includes recorded flight paths from 21 surveys flown on the following dates: 2 and 23 Aug 2023; 1 and 25 Sept 2023; 18 and 26 October 2023; 21 and 30 November 2023; 19 December 2023; 10 and 23 January 2024; 22 and 27 February 2024; 1 and 18 April 2024; 2 and 24 May 2024; 17 and 26 June 2024; 11 and 26 July 2024. Flight path records were obtained from GPS devices or downloaded from FlightAware (https://flightaware.com) where GPS data were not available. Tracklines were edited to remove transit and off-effort tracks. FWC staff members were primary observers for these flights, and dual observers (two observers, one in the front seat and one in the rear seat) were present on some or all survey flights. The survey area includes coastal areas of Volusia County, Florida from the Flagler-Volusia County line to the Volusia-Brevard County line at the southern end of Mosquito Lagoon.

This is a 24x24 inch downloadable PDF map of Mortality Rates from 2012-2016 for Manatees in Broward County.Layers include: Manatee Protection Zones, Ft Lauderdale Watersports Areas, FPL Power Stations, Manatee Mortalities 2012-2016, Manatee Carcass Recovery Locations in Florida.

This shapefile is a set of polygons representing suitable habitat for West Indian Manatee (Trichechus manatus).

Aerial distribution surveys are used by marine mammal biologists from Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission-Fish and Wildlife Research Institute (FWC-FWRI) and other agencies to determine the seasonal distribution of manatees. Most surveys are conducted from small, four-seat, high-winged airplanes (Cessna 172 or 182) flying at a height of 500-1000 ft at a speed of 70-90 kts. This survey was conducted by three aircraft mostly following historical flight paths used for past county-wide distribution surveys. However, some changes were made to shorten the flight route or to cover areas not flown in previous paths. Flight paths generally curved parallel to the shoreline, and the airplane circled when manatees were spotted until a count of the number of animals in each group was obtained. Circling was limited to 3 passes unless a group was unusually large and aerial photos were used in some cases to confirm counts. Sightings data were recorded on paper maps and entered into a GIS shapefile for spatial analysis using NAIP 2019 imagery and recorded flight paths as a reference. GIS is a computer software system for representing data spatially and for conducting spatial analyses. This dataset includes recorded flight paths from 21 surveys flown on the following dates: 21 Oct 2021; 16 Dec 2021; 14 Jan 2022; 20 and 21 Feb 2022; 20 and 21 March 2022; 23 May 2022; 09 and 12 Aug 2022; 16 and 17 Oct 2022; 9, 10, and 11 Dec 2022; 20 Jan 2023; 13 and 14 Feb 2023; 22, 23, and 24 March 2023; 9 and 10 May 2023; 21 and 22 August 2023; 9, 10, and 14 October 2023; 19 and 20 December 2023; 10 and 11 January 2024; 14 and 22 February 2024; 12 March 2024; 23 and 24 May 2024; 20 and 23 August 2024. For surveys that were conducted on multiple dates, the last date is recorded in the SurveyDate field. Flight path records were obtained from GPS devices or downloaded from FlightAware (https://flightaware.com) where GPS data were not available. For the 16 Dec 2021 survey, only the lower resolution flight path data from FlightAware were available for the southern survey area. For the 23 March 2023 survey, only the lower resolution flight path data from FlightAware were available for the northern survey area. For the 19 Dec 2023 survey, only the lower resolution flight path data from Flight Aware was available for a portion of the southern survey area. Tracklines are edited to remove transit and off-effort tracks.

NOAA NWS Point Weather Forecast for selected locations around Florida for use in FWC Manatee Support Map Series..

This feature class contains polygons of the zip code boundaries within Manatee County.

This feature class contains the centerline of travel path of NAMED roadway segments in Manatee County, Florida. This data set represents the location of Manatee County's road centerline network as captured from digital orthophotography (from SWFWMD contract) and site addressing plans from Manatee County's Address Coordinator. The feature class is attributed with street name, address ranges and other information. The street centerline feature class is maintained by Manatee County GIS on a weekly basis and is used for many of Manatee County's mapping products including the county's 9-1-1 dispatch map.