LISA: Crystal River was
perfect for the manatees. (water swooshing)
♪ When you lose the basis
of your ecosystem, which is your plants,
everything else goes away. ♪ It just becomes a chain
reaction of devastation, and that's what happened here. We lost it all. Our
river basically died. ♪ We are a manatee refuge.
They needed food. There was no food
for them to eat. ♪ (water splashing)
♪ It's one of those situations,
your house burns down. What do you do? You rebuild. You have to start from scratch. ♪ (water swooshing)
♪ ♪ Growing up in
Crystal River was any child's dream. You could go out on the boat
all day long, go fishing, swimming in the spring, and
the water was crystal clear. You could see fish all
around you, big fish, and they would just swim by. And manatees could come up here. There was plenty of food, and
they could bring their young. They would have
their babies here, and they would spend the
winter here in our springs. Our water's 72
degrees year round. It was just a great
habitat for wildlife. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Manatees,
also known as sea cows, are herbivores that
live in coastal rivers, bays, and estuaries. ♪ Florida manatees will travel
as far north as Virginia or as far west as
Texas in Summer. But each winter they
return to Florida and it's warm, spring-
fed rivers and bays. ♪ Two thirds of the
population now relies on the warm discharge
waters from power plants. Manatees began
taking refuge there over the past 30 years as
urban developments swallowed up spring-fed rivers and bays. ♪ There are still a few good
natural springs remaining, and one of the best
is Crystal River. But this manatee
haven was almost lost. LISA: Back in the '70s,
we had a lot of hydrilla, and that kind of
filled the river. It caused a problem. It was
an invasive fresh water plant. ♪ NARRATOR: The hydrilla
depleted oxygen levels in the water and out-competed
the native eelgrass, a staple of the manatees' diet. ♪ Then in the '90s, things
got a whole lot worse. (waves crashing)
♪ LISA: The 1993, they called
it, "Storm of the Century" or the "No-Name Storm." (waves crashing) We didn't know it was coming, and it blew in so much salt
water from the Gulf of Mexico. It inundated all the
waterfront homes. NARRATOR: The storm surge
pushed loads of salt water into Crystal River's
freshwater system. ♪ LISA: It really
affected the water, but nobody knew it at the time. ♪ We were so worried about
people that we didn't know that so much hydrilla was dead and fell to the
bottom of the river. ♪ That caused a problem
because it started to rot. ♪ NARRATOR: Eelgrass in
the river fared better because it thrives
in brackish water. But the rotting hydrilla
suffocated the grass and triggered an explosion of an invasive algae
called lyngbya. LISA: It turned into slime, and then it looked
like the surface of the moon on the bottom. It was noxious to animals.
It would give people rashes. Huge plumes of nasty algae
destroyed the eelgrass. ♪ NARRATOR: Manatees
need to eat close to 10% of their body weight
in eelgrass every day, up to 350 pounds of it. (water swooshing) The disappearing eelgrass in
Crystal River forced manatees to venture out
into colder waters where it's harder to find food and where they risk
dying from cold stress. Manatees can't survive long
in waters below 68 degrees. LISA: It had never
happened before, and nobody knew what
to do to fix it. I had children and grandchildren and I just kept thinking, "We
can't leave it like this." We know what this river used
to be, and we have to fix this. So neighbors got together,
friends got with other friends, and we formed
Save Crystal River. MARIE: Remember how bad it
was? This park was closed. It was probably the
only time in my life I wanted to leave Crystal River
'cause it was just terrible. NARRATOR: After watching
the lyngbya take over, Lisa and her friend
Marie urged the community to tackle the crisis. MARIE: It was 2015 when we
went to every school, and we asked them
to write a letter about why the river
was important to them. They wrote 5,280 letters, and so then we took
them to Tallahassee. LISA: I think that was
important, showing them that their opinions
mattered to the legislators. And it made an impression 'cause they knew that
these people cared. NARRATOR: The
campaign also opened the government's coffers. Soon, the community
nonprofit had the funding to hire a private contractor
to start restoring the river. LISA: One day, somebody
told us about a project that was similar to what
we needed to have done. They were taking out algae and replacing it with
healthy eelgrass. So they came up here, and they said, "We
think we can fix this." ♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Jessica
Mailliez works with aquatic restoration
firm, Sea and Shoreline to replant the
manatees' eelgrass on behalf of the community. ♪ JESSICA: I guess I
first realized that a career working with sea grass and
eelgrass would be something that I absolutely loved
was when I realized that really everything
depends on it. I love the manatees,
the turtles, all those charismatic creatures. ♪ NARRATOR: Eelgrass
cleans the water. Its roots hold the
sediment in place, and it serves as a critical
nursery for many kinds of fish. ♪ But for eelgrass to
return and thrive, the lyngbya algae had to go. (water swooshing) ♪ JESSICA: It's a nasty
mat-forming algae. It really blankets everything.
It blocks out the sunlight. Nothing can grow beneath it. That stuff smells awful. I mean, it is thick. ♪ We have divers that go in and
they hand vacuum the bottom. It's hours and hours, full days, four to eight hours
underwater in no visibility. Just feeling around
on the bottom and making sure that you
remove all of this nasty algae. It's a dirty job. ♪ We've removed over
500 million pounds of lyngbya and detrital muck. ♪ ♪ I think one of the proudest
moments for our divers and our dredge
crew is being able to uncover those
large spring vents. ♪ You start going down,
down, down into a hole. And you realize when you start to feel some water gushing out that you just opened
up a spring vent that's been clogged for
who knows how many years. ♪ NARRATOR: The
vents are like faucets delivering warm water
from underground aquifers deep within the Earth. JESSICA: We have cleaned and
uncovered over 800 spring vents in the Crystal River area. ♪ (water splashing) NARRATOR: Once
the algae is removed, young grasses can be planted. (water splashing) ♪ There's a lot of
river bed to cover, and it's all done by hand. ♪ Pre-rooted pods are
planted every three feet. ♪ (water swooshing) JESSICA: After we plant these,
we come back to check on them every single week for
the first four weeks, then biweekly after that,
and then every single month for a total of 12 months. ♪ NARRATOR: The
community's efforts to remove the algae mats
and restore eelgrass have reversed the
river's decline. ♪ Manatees are once
again thriving here, and tourism and
fishing are both up. ♪ JESSICA: Crystal River
is a huge success story. We have some of the healthiest
manatees in the state, and this warm-water refuge is
also like a salad bar to them. ♪ Last winter, we had our- our highest
concentration of manatees in this area
reaching over 1,000. ♪ NARRATOR: The
numbers statewide have increased significantly
over the past 50 years, from a low of just a few
hundred manatees in the '60s, to a high of about
9,000 in 2016. ♪ But since then, the trend
has been going down again, and the Crystal River
manatees are one of the few populations
doing well. ♪ One of the most
threatened populations is in the Indian River Lagoon,
which is facing a crisis eerily similar to the one
Crystal River endured. ♪ JESSICA: The Indian River Lagoon
is on the east coast of Florida, and the problem that
we've seen there is we had gradual
sea grass loss. And then a huge brown
tide bloom came in and completely starved
the grass of all sunlight, and we lost what we
were already short on. ♪ (water swooshing) (equipment humming) NARRATOR: The Manatee
Critical Care Center at Zoo Tampa is trying
to manage the fallout. ♪ MOLLY: We've had
over 500 manatees come through our doors and over
300 go back to the wild. ♪ NARRATOR: Manatees are
here for a variety of reasons. Some have been struck by boats
or overexposed to cold water. But increasingly
they're being brought in because they're starving. ♪ MOLLY: All over the state of
Florida, we are seeing a die off of natural sea
grasses for manatees. ♪ Manatees on the East
Coast, in particular, they're coming in
basically starving. They're emaciated.
They are very ill. ♪ NARRATOR: The
zoo tries to save as many patients as possible. MOLLY: Manatees have a
pretty slow gestation, which means they don't
give birth that often, about every two to three years. So if you're losing
a lot of adults, that can be really detrimental to the species in the long run. ♪ This year alone, we took in
17 manatees in two months, which is an incredible number. I've seen quite a few
orphans coming in our doors, and we don't really know what
happened to their mother. But they come in with
no wild experience, and so we want to set
them up for success. ♪ They have to gain a lot of
weight when they're at the zoo. They eat about eight
hours of their day, and so that is a ton of food. ♪ We can give them romaine lettuce and things to get their
body condition back up, but we need the
natural vegetation in order for them to thrive. ♪ This is natural sea grass that's been collected
from the wild, and today I'll be putting
it in for our orphan calves. ♪ Our goal is to feed
it every single day, so that way they're used to it. ♪ (water splashing) They need sea grasses out in
the wild for them to survive. So it's really important that we're out there
protecting the sea grasses and helping them to grow so
that the manatees will be here for many years to come. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR: When the manatees
from Zoo Tampa are ready to return to the wild,
a destination of choice is the restored Crystal
River ecosystem. MOLLY: Crystal River, in
particular, has changed and is such a bountiful
environment for them that we're releasing those
animals to that space. (group cheering) ♪ NARRATOR: It's
also become a model for restoration elsewhere. LISA: We wanted everybody
in the state of Florida who had a problem like
this to know what we did, how we did it, how to
get others involved, share this information. NARRATOR: Along the
Indian River Lagoon, conservationists
are taking notice. The region has a long
road to recovery, but Crystal River has given
them a roadmap for success. ♪ LISA: The Indian River
Lagoon is replicating the same kind of process that's
being used in Crystal River. JESSICA: You don't have
to be a scientist to be part of the solution. You can do something as simple
as not using fertilizers, pulling weeds by hand. ♪ You can even be a-
a responsible boater by being conscious of
here you're anchoring, making sure you're using
grass-friendly anchors. You can help educate
the younger generation about the importance of
creating a healthy ecosystem. (water splashing)
♪ ♪ LISA: I think my grandchildren
and all the children that are growing
up now will inherit from our generation a
clean, healthy river teeming with wildlife, both
above and below the water. ♪ This river is the life that
runs through this community. We wanna protect it forever. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
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