ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., (UPI) -- The mysterious epidemic that is killing endangered manatees off Florida's southwest coast appears to have abated, Florida environmental officials said Tuesday.
"It's been 10 days since we picked up a carcass in the southwest area," said Department of Environmental Protection spokeswoman Edie Ousley.
"There has been an obvious slowdown in the manatee die-off."
So far this year, 261 dead manatees have been recovered, 157 of them in the area off the southwestern coast. The previous mortality record was 206 for the entire year of 1990. Researchers around the world have joined the investigation into what's killing the animals. A prime suspect is red tide, an algae bloom that infests semi-tropical waters.
While researchers have no conclusive proof that red tide is responsible, manatee deaths have abated along with its recession.
"We haven't ruled anything out at this point, and...there's no direct evidence linkingred tide to the manatee mortality," said Allen Huff, research administrator at the Florida Marine Research Institute.
Researchers said the grass-eating mammals died quickly from lesions that formed in their lungs, and affected mostly adult animals. Huff said despite the epidemic's toll, there was encouraging evidence the population was still strong. The last survey in February counted 2, 639 manatees in all of Florida's waters, but an aerial count Monday showed 600 animals in the so-called "event zone" in southwestern waters.
Another survey will be done in about 10 days, he said. As many as 150 people have been involved in retrieving dead manatees and examining them since the crisis began in early March, ranging from state, federal and private workers to researchers at Erasmus University of the Netherlands.