As Miami-Dade County moves quickly to approve a lease for a new Seaquarium marina, a third study looking at risks to manatees warns the lumbering sea cows could be put at risk by a busy new marina so close to seagrass flats and a neighboring wildlife refuge.
Based on decades of county data, Save the Manatee Club argues its study paints a fuller picture than one commissioned by marina developer David Martin, which omitted the data and found little impact .
“I believe his interpretations are flawed, and extremely flawed,” said Beth Brady, director of Science and Conservation at the Save the Manatee Club, who routinely reviews marina plans submitted to state and federal regulators for impacts to manatees. “They don't really show the true picture of how manatees utilize the habitat.”
READ MORE: To better protect manatees, state wildlife officials want to downsize Seaquarium marina
In addition to the dueling studies, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has also issued findings on the marina plan submitted to state environmental regulators.
That plan called for 325 wet boat slips and 500 dry slips, with some accommodating boats up to 200-feet long. FWC concluded manatees frequently use waters around the marina, as they travel around the neighboring wildlife refuge, through Bear Cut and around Virginia Key and Key Biscayne.
FWC recommended the number be dramatically cut to 250 in total, a number that Save the Manatee Club also recommends. Martin has since reduced the number to 295 wet slips and about 550 in dry dock storage.
In response to questions, the developer’s team stood by many of its findings that manatees infrequently use the area. But they also said the county’s Department of Environmental Resources Management failed to provide them with data used by Save the Manatee.
"Resilient Aquarium has repeatedly requested any available DERM data since August, and we have not received it as of today,” a statement released Monday said. “Our team has enlisted Dr. Jerry Ault, an expert on marine population dynamics and Biscayne Bay, to review any available data. Dr. Ault has concluded that the waters surrounding Miami Seaquarium are not an area where manatees frequently transit or congregate. This stands in stark contrast with the north side of Virginia Key, where manatee sightings are documented by the data."
The county has taken steps to speed up approvals for the marina after signing off on a lease deal last year. Tomorrow, a county committee will vote on bypassing the normal timeline by asking commissioners to waive a requirement for four-weeks notice on such leases as well as two independent appraisals. The committee will hold a hearing at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.
Critics also say the county is avoiding a more in-depth review of the project by not including the marina in a comprehensive land use application to redesignate the county-owned land a special entertainment district. The application only includes about 35 acres included in the original seaquarium footprint and not the additional 56-acres of bay bottom covered by the marina lease. County rules call for projects over 50-acres to undergo more rigorous reviews.
Two residents have sued to have the matter put before voters, arguing that the steps violated county’s Save Our Parks charter amendment approved by voters in the 1990s, which requires a referendum for commercial operatioins in county park land and aquatic preserves. A day after county attorneys moved to have the lawsuit dismissed, saying the case was premature because no steps had been taken to finalize the project, staff added the lease deal to the committee agenda.
”Why is the commission trying to take every action to create less public participation and less oversight at every turn,” said attorney Greg Frankel, a lifelong resident who filed the lawsuit with Aaron Stauber, another resident and attorney. “Why is the commission constantly taking the argument in favor of less public participation and more of a rushed process?”
The construction of a marina in prime manatee habitat comes at a critical time for the species. As one of the first marine mammals added to the endangered species list in the 1960s, manatees have long served as a poster child for disappearing wildlife in Florida. The Save the Manatee Cub was founded by singer Jimmy Buffett and former Gov. Bob Graham in 1981 after a backstage chat at a Tallahassee concert when Buffett complained increasing boat traffic was taking its toll.
Low speed zones and a public campaign helped improve conditions, so much so that in 2017, after counts put the population at 6,000, manatees were downlisted from endangered to threatened. Yet boat strikes remain frequent. More than 90% of manatees have been scarred by boat propellers and are likely hit repeatedly, according to the FWC.
Then in 2020, the population plummeted after a massive seagrass die-off tied to water pollution along the Atlantic Coast left many to starve, with more than 1,200 found dead. Renewed efforts to beef up protections led federal wildlife managers to promise to designate critical wildlife habitat for Florida manatees. That promise, however, languished.
On Monday, the Center for Biological Diversity and several environmental groups including the Save the Manatee Club filed a notice of intent to sue the federal government for failing to designate the habitat.
“ Manatees are still very much not out of the woods,” said attorney Elizabeth Neville, Save the Manatee’s environmental law and policy director.
In their study, Save the Manatee relied on county surveys of manatee activity conducted three to four times a year between 1993 and 2024, a far more robust collection than the once-a-year flights conducted by FWC and cited in Martin’s study done by University of Miami Rosenstiel School emeritus professor Jerry Ault. Save the Manatee also used data collected by Florida Power & Light for manatees that had been tagged and track to show their movement up and down the Atlantic coast.
Save the Manatee questioned Ault’s conclusion that boats using the marina would likely cross paths with manatees less frequently because of its location near deepwater channels that lead to open water.
“ Not everyone is going to go into the open ocean,” Brady said.
A 1,000-foot wide slow speed zone has long buffered waters off the Seaquarium, one of dozens around the county in areas frequented by manatees. But the county struggles to enforce those speed zones. A 2024 county report on boating in Biscayne Bay found more than 10,000 citations were issued in manatee speed zones alone between 2019 and 2024.
The report followed a slew of fatal crashes to determine if more speed zones needed to be put in place to improve bay safety. While it didn’t recommend expanding the zones, the county’s marine patrol unit said, “It is evident that the MDC waterways have become very busy and can be dangerous at times.” The unit also warned, “the greater concern is the lack of the boating community adhering to the current restrictions.”
In its study, Save the Manatee argued Martin’s study took an “overly narrow” look at the traffic generated by the marina by not considering the wider bay.
“The issue that we're concerned with is not just the project site itself, but the boats in there. Boats aren't bought to stay at docks, they tend to travel,” Brady said. “In a perfect world, we wouldn't have any additional marinas, but that's not feasible. So if you're going to build them, build them so we can protect the habitat and, and manatees as well.”
