RIVIERA BEACH, Fla. — A polar vortex that has hit much of the U.S. with ice and snow has dealt a glancing blow to Florida, dropping coastal temperatures and causing the Sunshine State’s manatee population, still recovering from a mass starvation event several years ago, to seek warmer waters.

Besides inland natural springs, a popular destination for the docile aquatic mammals is the warm-water outflows of about a dozen power plants around Florida. Manatees have been attracted to the warm-water discharges for decades, following a watery travel route that mother manatees have taught to manatee calves. Public viewing areas are located near power plants in Riviera Beach, Fort Myers and Apollo Beach.

Dozens of the sea cows, which can grow up to 10 feet (3 meters) long and 1,200 pounds (544 kilograms), have been congregating for the past week near Florida Power & Light Company’s Riviera Beach plant, where the company opened the Manatee Lagoon attraction in 2016. The two-story, 16,000-square-foot complex is free and open to the public. They’re hosting a family-friendly ManateeFest on Feb. 1.

“Manatees are such a special species that we have in our waters here in Florida, because they are a sentinel species, which means that they’re an indicator for any water problems that we may have or any environmental issues we may have,” Manatee Lagoon education manager Rachel Shanker said. “They’re kind of the first animals to start to respond to any changes in the environment. And because they’re so charismatic, people really take note of that.”

The facility is open all year, but the best chance to see the animals is from Nov. 15 to March 31, when Florida water temperatures can drop below 68 degrees, which is deadly to manatees. While boating collisions are the top man-made threat to manatees, cold stress is the most common natural threat.

“So during the power generation process, that power plant puts out clean, warm water, and that warm water draws the manatees in when it gets cold,” Shanker said.

Ocean water is sucked in from the bay and used to cool the plant, but no chemicals or other substances are added to the water, Shanker said. The warm water discharged from the plant is the same ocean water, just warmer, and completely safe for wildlife.

The number of manatees near the power plant can fluctuate, but Shanker said Friday that the most they’ve counted this year is about 85.

“The manatees come here to Manatee Lagoon for that warm water, but we don’t have a large population of seagrass right here on our property,” Shanker said. “And so they’ll come here to Manatee Lagoon to get warm, then when they start to get hungry, they will travel out to find those seagrass beds, and they’ll go feed until they get full, and they get cold, and they’ll come back to our warm water to get warm.”

According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, 565 manatee deaths were recorded in 2024, similar to the 555 deaths recorded a year earlier. Those numbers are down significantly from 2021, when officials recorded over 1,100 manatee deaths, mostly caused by starvation. Pollution from farm, urban and other sources has decimated the seagrass on which the animals depend.

“The center of those problems was in the Indian River Lagoon, where over the years, they’ve had these problems with all these algal blooms,” FWC manatee veterinarian Martine de Wit said. “And that affected the water clarity and quality, and seagrass had died off in that area.”

Indian River Lagoon is located along the Atlantic Coast in central Florida. State waters are home to more than 8,000 manatees with at least a third living or migrating through Indian River Lagoon.

State wildlife officials tried to mitigate the casualties by temporarily feeding lettuce to manatees. After two especially deadly winters, seagrass in the area began to recover, and manatee deaths have dropped.

“Seagrass is resilient, and it came back on its own, and manatees found it,” de Wit said.

While overall deaths have come down over the past two years, records show a spike in dead calves for this past year. The seagrass famine left many manatees so malnourished that they were physically unable to reproduce for several years, de Wit said. When the food returned, those previously starving animals all began reproducing at the same time.

“When you have higher pregnancy rates, more manatees being born, you always have a proportion that does not make it,” de Wit said. “I think that was just a measure of the reproduction coming back after all those lean years since 2020.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Monday rejected efforts by several Florida environmental groups to get the manatees back on the endangered species list. The manatee was downgraded from endangered to threatened in 2017 and will remain in that classification.

Florida’s manatee population is recovering, but officials and residents need to remain vigilant in protecting the threatened species, de Wit said.

“We always look into the future, and there are significant threats to manatees statewide,” de Wit said. “It’s looking better now, but you cannot sit back and watch it unfold, because we know it needs management and conservation efforts to protect them.”

TALLAHASSEE – Saying social media is “facing a reckoning,” Florida fired back Monday against a lawsuit challenging a new state law aimed at keeping children off social media platforms.

Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office filed two documents urging a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit and to deny a preliminary injunction that social media industry groups are seeking to block the measure.

The law was one of the highest-profile issues of the 2024 legislative session, with lawmakers saying that addictive social media platforms harm children. But the Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice, whose members include tech giants such as Google and Meta Platforms, filed the challenge in October, contending the law violates First Amendment rights and that parents should make decisions about children’s social media use.

The state’s filings Monday raised a series of arguments, including that the industry groups do not have legal standing to challenge the law (HB 3) and that the law’s restrictions do not violate speech rights.

“The statute regulates purely commercial activity – transacting with children while using harmful features to addict them,” the state’s attorneys wrote in opposing a preliminary injunction. “Minors have no First Amendment right to contract for products designed to addict them. HB 3 is also a reasonable, content-neutral time, place, and manner restriction. It regulates only the manner in which children engage with social media.”

But in the lawsuit, attorneys for the industry groups said Florida “cannot begin to show that its draconian access restrictions are necessary to advance any legitimate interest it may assert.”

“Parents already have a wealth of tools at their disposal to limit what online services their minor children use, what they can do on those services, and how often they can use them,” the lawsuit said. “Florida may wish that more Floridians shared its own views about whether minors should use ‘social media platforms.’ But while the state may take many steps to protect minors from harm, including by persuading parents to take advantage of tools to limit their minor children’s access to ‘social media platforms,’ it may not take matters into its own hands and restrict access itself.”

The law, which was spearheaded by then-House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, was scheduled to take effect Jan. 1. But Moody agreed in November to delay enforcement until Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Wilson rules on the injunction request. Walker has scheduled a Feb. 28 hearing.

The law, in part, seeks to prevent children under age 16 from opening social media accounts on certain platforms – though it would allow parents to give consent for 14- and 15-year-olds to have accounts. Children under 14 could not open accounts.

The law does not name social-media platforms that would be affected. But it includes a definition of such platforms, with criteria related to such things as algorithms, “addictive features” and allowing users to view the content or activities of other users.

The lawsuit repeatedly referred to sites such as YouTube and Facebook – while also saying the law would not apply to services such as Disney+.

“While the law purports to address ‘addictive features,’ it does not restrict access to all mediums that employ similar features to engage their audience,” attorneys for the industry groups wrote. “The law leaves services like Disney+, Hulu, and Roblox uncovered, even though many minors spend hours on those services each day, and even though they employ the same so-called ‘addictive features,’ like personalized algorithms, push notifications, and autoplay. The state’s only evident justification for restricting access to Facebook and YouTube while leaving many other mediums for speech untouched is the state’s apparent belief that the covered websites deliver content the state thinks is particularly harmful.”

The state’s motion to dismiss the case, however, argued the law does not trigger “heightened First Amendment scrutiny.”

“The law limits children from having accounts on platforms that traffic in addiction,” the motion said. “It leaves platforms free to present content to children and adults through non-addictive means and free to present material to children who do not hold accounts. That affects only a child’s ability to ‘enter’ certain online businesses – it does not in any way censor children on the internet.”

If social-media companies violate the law they could face penalties up to $50,000 per violation. The law also would open them to lawsuits filed on behalf of minors.

“Social media is facing a reckoning,” the state’s attorneys wrote in opposing a preliminary injunction. “Because of whistleblowers and leaked internal documents, the public has learned that social-media companies for years have deployed features to addict youth with full awareness of the destruction compulsive use has on children’s mental health.”

Meanwhile, a separate pending lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of another part of the law that requires age verification to try to prevent minors from having access to online pornographic sites. That lawsuit was filed by different plaintiffs.

ORLANDO, Fla. – What we know: A 23-year-old woman from Altoona was killed Tuesday morning in a crash involving a dump truck and a sedan on County Road 439 near County Road 44A, authorities said.

The Florida Highway Patrol said the crash occurred at approximately 8:23 a.m. when a 1994 dump truck traveling northbound on CR-439 encountered stopped traffic. The driver, a 28-year-old man from Leesburg, attempted to brake but veered into the southbound lane, colliding head-on with a 2019 Toyota Corolla.

The driver of the Corolla was transported to AdventHealth Waterman Hospital, where she was pronounced dead, troopers said. The dump truck driver was not injured and remained at the scene.

Both directions of CR-439 remain blocked as authorities continue to investigate. No additional details have been released.

A full media release will be provided as more information becomes available.

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