U-sustain week 4

 

Welcome to our first in person full body meeting this term! We have lots to discuss including elections, Wold display cases, and earth day event planning. 

First the news:

• Florida manatees are being threatened with loss of habitat and sea grass to forage
• In 2021 there were 1100 deaths many from starvation
• there are now 7500 individuals in the wild
• most years there are only about ~500 deaths
• Foraging becomes even harder in winter when manatees need to eat more to stay warm
• Algae blooms are killing the local sea grass and at Indian River Lagoon (bottom left picture) there has been a 58% loss in sea grass since 2011
• sea grass also happens to be an endangered species too
• Recently there has been an effort to cultivate sea grass using divers and cages
• this can be really labor intensive, but has shown to be successful at reintroducing seagrass

• New research tool which can sample animal DNA from the air
• this can be used to track animal movements especially for species hard to access
• other tracking methods include capturing and placing a tag or setting up camera traps
• tests are being preformed in Zoos as the technology is still in development. 
• The animals pictured are dingos and the tube at the bottom of the photo is the air sampling device.

Thanks for reading!