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Florida manatee deaths top 500, almost half way to last year’s record

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Florida manatee deaths top 500, almost half way to last year’s record


Manatee deaths simply crossed the five hundred mark this 12 months. That macabre milestone places the Sunshine State nearly half-way to final 12 months’s darkest 12 months on document for the threatened species.

However in what would possibly provide some hope: this 12 months’s demise price isn’t practically as dangerous as final 12 months’s presently, when 673 sea cows had died by mid-April. Final 12 months, 1,101 manatees perished, most from hunger.

At the very least 158 fewer manatees have died thus far this 12 months throughout the identical Jan. 1 to April 15 interval, in comparison with final 12 months, based on the newest stats from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Fee. 

However biologists say the herd, already thinned by an estimated 10% final 12 months, continues to be underneath menace. 

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“Environmental situations in parts of the Indian River Lagoon stay a priority,” warns the FWC’S most up-to-date replace on the continued manatee die-offs. 

State and federal biologists have been feeding manatees at the Cape Canaveral Clean Energy Center since mid-December to stave off a mass starvation.

This 12 months’s 515 deaths are 201 greater than the five-year common for manatee deaths in Florida of 314 deaths at this stage of the 12 months.

The place is it the worst? In Brevard County.

This 12 months’s demise toll contains 314 deaths (61%) in Brevard County, 45 of which had been reported from March 15 to April 15.

Researchers  attribute the weird die-off to hunger due to a lack of seagrasses within the Indian River Lagoon, most of which is in Brevard County. State biologists say this has been man-made famine.

A long time of air pollution from septic tanks, sewage spills, an excessive amount of fertilizer and poor stormwater administration set the lagoon on a collision course with the legal guidelines of nature, ecologists say. All of the nitrogen and phosphorus these sources delivered fueled extra algae progress that blocked daylight from seagrass — manatees’ primary weight-reduction plan — and in any other case choked out different marine life.

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When the weather was cold, manatees huddled together in the war water of the Desoto Canal in Satellite Beach.

In a method, manatees have been fortunate this 12 months. A La Niña local weather sample of cooler waters within the equatorial Pacific Ocean resulted in warmer-than-usual winters in Florida, saving some manatees from dying from the stress of chilly.

However with the 12 months lower than a 3rd over and the demise toll nearly at half of final 12 months’s document 1,101 deaths, biologists and conservationists concern what may this 12 months’s winter may carry. La Niña is anticipated to be over, and there are already so many malnourished manatees. 

Recuperating juvenile manatees feast on Romaine lettuce, SeaWorld goes through 275 cases - 24 to a case- of Romaine lettuce a week. SeaWorld in Orlando is presently treating  30 sick manatees in varying degrees of health.

To assist nourish them, FWC and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this previous winter launched into a pilot program that fed manatees on the chilly water discharge space at Florida Energy & Mild Co.’s energy plant in Port St. John.

Getting sea cows some vitality: Manatees munch lettuce at FPL energy plant

Feeding manatees: Florida mulls the unthinkable: feeding manatees within the wild

Ought to we kill manatees to avoid wasting them? Brevard County Commissioner argues Florida ought to kill manatees to avoid wasting them

The trouble was prompted because the demise toll rose, and island outcroppings in Brevard turned mass manatee graves. State biologists couldn’t sustain.

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The demise toll grew so dangerous that in April 2021, the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared the die-off an Uncommon Mortality Occasion. That designation frees up federal funding for additional investigations and response.

2022 manatee deaths in Florida

This 12 months’s 515 manatee deaths in Florida incudes 314 deaths (61%) in Brevard County. The breakdown of the causes of these Brevard manatees deaths was as follows, based on FWC statistics: 

  • Not Necropsied — 229 
  • Pure — 69
  • Perinatal — 6
  • Undetermined — 5 
  • Watercraft — 3
  • Flood Gate/Canal Lock — 0
  • Different Human — 2
  • Chilly Stress — 0

Source: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Fee

If you happen to see a sick or injured manatee

Name FWC’s Wildlife Alert toll-free quantity: 1-888-404-FWCC (1-888-404-3922) or #FWC or *FWC on a cellphone in case you see a sick, injured, lifeless or tagged manatee.

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Jim Waymer is an surroundings reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Waymer at 321-261-5903 or jwaymer@floridatoday.com. Or discover him on Twitter: @JWayEnviro or on Fb: www.fb.com/jim.waymer

Help native journalism and native journalists like me. Go to floridatoday.com/subscribe





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Florida

Virginia boy charged with making swatting calls to Florida schools

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Virginia boy charged with making swatting calls to Florida schools



CBS News Miami

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An 11-year-Virginia boy has been charged in Florida with calling in more than 20 bomb or shooting threats to schools and other places, authorities said Thursday.

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Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly said that authorities worked hard to find the caller before the school year resumes.

“This kid’s behavior was escalating and becoming more dangerous,” Staly said. “I’m glad we got him before he escalated out of control and hurt someone.”

Swatting is slang for making a prank call to emergency services in an attempt to send a SWAT team or other armed police officers to a particular place.

Flagler County emergency services initially received a bomb threat at Buddy Taylor Middle School on May 14, officials said. Additional threats were made between then and May 22. 

Investigators tracked the calls to a home in Henrico County, Virginia, just outside Richmond. Local deputies searched the home this month, and the 11-year-old boy who lived there admitted to placing the Florida swatting calls, as well as a threat made to the Maryland State House, authorities said. Investigators later determined that the boy also made swatting calls in Nebraska, Kansas, Alabama, Tennessee and Alaska.

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The boy faces 29 felony counts and 14 misdemeanors, officials said. He’s being held in a Virginia juvenile detention facility while Florida officials arrange for his extradition. Investigators didn’t immediately say whether the boy had a connection to Florida.

A 13-year-old boy was arrested in Florida in May, several days after the initial call, for making a copycat threat to Buddy Taylor Middle School.



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Is there a sunken nuclear bomb near Florida? Here’s what to know

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Is there a sunken nuclear bomb near Florida? Here’s what to know


TYBEE ISLAND, Ga. – Off the coast of Georgia, a massive bomb potentially sits in the water after having been flown out from Florida decades prior.

According to NPR, the whole incident began in 1958 when a B-47 bomber plane took off from Homestead AFB in Florida with the 7,600-pound nuclear bomb in tow, heading out to meet up with another bomber for a training exercise.

During an open house at Boeing Plant 2 in Seattle, Washington, people walk around to view the lineup of Boeing bomber planes. This lineup at the northend of Boeing Field includes the B-29, B-47 “Stratojet,” and the B-52 “Superfortress.” (Photo by © Museum of Flight/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images) (Museum of Flight/Getty Images)

HOW DID IT HAPPEN?

The plan was to reportedly simulate an attack on the Soviet Union as part of the exercise, and everything was going well — until another training mission mistakenly crashed into the B-47 carrying the bomb.

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As a result, the pilot chose to let loose the bomb over the water off Tybee Island in Georgia before making an emergency landing in a nearby swamp.

Tybee Island Lighthouse (Photo by J. Miers via Wikimedia/Creative Commons)

The bomb didn’t go off even after dropping into the ocean below, though that could be because the nuclear material needed to set such bombs off was typically kept separate from the weapon until it was needed, the BBC reports.

DID THEY FIND IT?

Federal officials spent over two weeks searching for the bomb in the aftermath, but it was ultimately determined to be irretrievable.

While a receipt written by the pilot shows that the necessary capsule wasn’t added to the bomb before the training exercise — meaning it wouldn’t be at a huge risk of detonation — other federal officials have claimed otherwise, such as a former Assistant Secretary of Defense W.J. Howard, who claimed that the bomb was “complete.”

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“He concluded that despite our best efforts, the possibility of an accidental nuclear explosion still existed,” a declassified report reads.

Nowadays, the bomb is thought to be covered by several feet of silt on the seabed, but if the explosives within are still intact, it could pose a major hazard to the environment. As such, federal officials have determined that it should be left undisturbed — even by further recovery attempts.

CAN AN ATOMIC BOMB GO OFF UNDERWATER?

If it’s actually off the coast of Tybee Island, then yes: the bomb can still detonate, even underwater.

In 1946, the U.S. tested an atomic bomb at the Bikini Atoll — in the Pacific Ocean far southwest of Hawaii — by suspending it below several ships filled with pigs and rats.

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After it was set off underwater, nearly all of the animals died, either thanks to the initial explosion or from the radiation poisoning afterward. And the area is still irradiated to this day.

The Baker test during Operation Crossroads, a series of two nuclear weapons tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll. 25th July 1946. The purpose of the operation, which included two shots, ABLE and BAKER, was to investigate the effect of nuclear weapons on naval warships. Mushroom-shaped cloud and water column from the underwater Baker nuclear explosion. Photo taken from a tower on Bikini Island, 3.5 miles (5.6 km) away. Marshall Islands, Pacific. (PHoto by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) (2015 Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images)

WHAT HAPPENS IF IT DETONATES?

For starters: it doesn’t appear as likely that the bomb will explode.

While Howard initially claimed the bomb was complete, a military spokesman told The Atlantic in 2001 that they’d spoken with him, and “he agreed that his memo was in error.”

But if the bomb did manage to get outfitted with a plutonium trigger and detonated, it would erupt into an explosion with a mile-wide radius — and thermal radiation reaching 10 times that distance, according to the Savannah Morning News.

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That would no doubt cause havoc within the immediate proximity, but on the bright side, Tybee Island is well over 100 miles (roughly a two-hour drive) from Florida’s border. This means Florida residents have little to fear from the direct impacts of such an explosion.

So you can sleep tight knowing you’re not likely to find yourself on the worse end of a nuclear weapon.

That being said, there are still plenty of other scary things in Florida to keep you up at night.


Get today’s headlines in minutes with Your Florida Daily:

Copyright 2024 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.

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Trulieve adds $5M to recreational marijuana campaign in Florida

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Trulieve adds M to recreational marijuana campaign in Florida


Stream FOX 35 News

The medical cannabis company Trulieve has contributed another $5 million to a campaign to allow recreational marijuana in Florida, according to a newly filed finance report. 

The company made the contribution on July 15 to the Smart & Safe Florida political committee, which is leading efforts to pass a recreational marijuana initiative on the November ballot. 

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MORE HEADLINES: 

According to a state Division of Elections database, Trulieve had contributed about $60.39 million to the committee as of July 19. 

The committee raised a total of $66.475 million in cash and nearly $129,000 in in-kind contributions, and it spent $53.963 million. 

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The initiative, which will appear on the ballot as Amendment 3, says, in part, that it would allow “adults 21 years or older to possess, purchase, or use marijuana products and marijuana accessories for nonmedical personal consumption by smoking, ingestion, or otherwise.” 

Voters in 2016 passed a constitutional amendment that allowed medical marijuana.



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