Ranger Rob Howell, a naturalist with the Pink Shell Beach Resort, tends to a manatee who washed up near the Pink Shell Beach Resort, and helped it breathe until FWC personnel responded. The manatee was transported to ZooTampa for evaluation. PROVIDED

A young manatee that washed up with the tide on Fort Myers Beach near the Pink Shell Beach Resort, died despite the efforts of the resort’s naturalist Robert Howell and a team of biologists from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Service Commission to save him Thursday afternoon.

The efforts of Howell and others at first seemed enough to save the life of the manatee but the effects of exposure to cold waters led to his death, FWC Public Information Officer Adam Brown said.

Brown said the small male manatee was about 6 feet in length and thin, “suffering from exposure to the cold.”

The FWC’s marine mammal rescue team responded to the manatee incident on Fort Myers Beach from their field lab in Port Charlotte, which covers 10 counties within the southwest region of Florida.

“The manatee was placed in a climate controlled (heated) box truck, into a pool of water, and covered with a thermal blanket,” Brown said in an email. “Sadly, the manatee was pronounced deceased less than an hour into transport to the rehabilitation facility.”

Personnel from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and Lee County Sheriff's Office responded to Fort Myers Beach to help rescue a distressed manatee who washed ashore Thursday. PROVIDED

Howell, who sits on the Fort Myers Beach Marine and Environmental Resources Task Force, said he was notified at about 12:30 p.m. of the manatee floating close to the shore. He contacted the FWC and said they arrived about an hour and a half later.

Howell, who is FWC-trained, estimated that the manatee weighed about 250 pounds or more — enough to make his shoulder sore from pulling the manatee out of the water along with assistance from an employee of Holiday Water Sports. The Lee County Sheriff”s Office and Fort Myers Beach Fire Control District also responded.

The manatee was “kind of just washing in with the tide,” he said. “It had been out there for a while.”

When the manatee moved past the sandbar, the FWC was contacted and Howell made sure it was safe to follow the procedures of pulling it safely out of harm’s way and onto the beach. At that point, Howell kept the manatee breathing for about an hour and a half until the FWC arrived by having water poured on it every few minutes. Unlike other animals who breathe on their own, manatee breathe as a reflex to water, Howell said.

Howell believes the manatee was reacting to cold stress. Temperatures have been colder than normal for weeks in Florida. Manatees need warm waters to stay alive in the winter. They tend to gravitate locally to Manatee Park though Howell said the young manatee could have been separated from its mother and gotten lost. “It might not know where it is,” he said.

The manatee had two boat strike marks from propellers which had healed and were not the cause of its beaching.

Once the FWC arrived, they placed the manatee in a stretcher and walked it to a waiting FWC truck. “It was a big community effort. It was good to see that collaboration,” Howell said. The manatee never reached its destination of ZooTampa, dying on the way there.

Howell estimates that this type of beaching happens once a month in the region. There were at least two such incidents on Fort Myers Beach he dealt with last year.

“If you see a manatee on the beach, don’t put it back in the water. Call the FWC first. Don’t ever touch them. The best thing you can do is keep people from them,” Howell said.

If you see a marine mammal in distress, you should contact FWC immediately so trained professionals can assess the animal and give it the medical attention it may need, Brown said. The FWC responds to reports of distressed manatees by investigating reports from the public and performs rescues for those animals in need of intervention. Call FWC’s Wildlife Alert hotline: 1-888-404-FWCC (1-888-404-3922), press “7” to speak with an operator. Never push back a stranded marine mammal back out to sea if found stranded on the beach.

Lee County led the state in manatee deaths last year and had the second-most in 2022.

Manatees were long on the Endangered Species List but were removed in 2017. The main culprits for manatee deaths are cold weather, boat strikes, and loss of vegetation due to pollution and habitat destruction.