How Long Do Manatees Live?

Video Transcript

"I'm Nadine Slimak at Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium. One of the questions we get asked pretty regularly is how long manatees live. One of...manatees are one of the species that we study here at Mote. We also have manatees that live here at Mote Aquarium that you can come see anytime. Some of the studies that we do with the manatees are learning how well they navigate their environment in the wild. We try to learn how well they see, how well they hear, and how well they sense their environment around them using things like touch. That leads us to learn more about how manatees survive in the wild and how long they live. The oldest known manatee lives in captivity and has been living there for about 60 years. In the wild, things are not quite the same. Manatees have many different things that affect their lives and how long they can survive. Things like red tide may shorten their lives and may affect them with its toxins. Boat strikes can also affect manatees, so that's why it's important that if you're boating in Southwest Florida, you follow proper speed zones. All these different things are factors into how long manatees live. It's not as easy to answer the question as say, you were following a human being and you had a lot of population history and could understand how long and the birth life and death of that animal. Humans have been studied, well, as long as we've all been alive, so we know a lot more about our own life expectancy. I'm Nadine Slimack at Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium."