LARGO, Fla. — The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC) has released the cause of death of a manatee found belly-up over the weekend in a canal in Pinellas County.
Neighbors in Largo told 10 Tampa Bay they saw the adult manatee Saturday morning with what they believed to be gunshot wounds on the animal.
"We saw this big grey mound sitting on this marsh over here and my wife said, 'What is that? That's not a rock. It's never been there before,'" Peter Lang, a homeowner who first made the discovery, said. "I jumped in the kayak and paddled over, and sure enough, it's a manatee that's dead. It's on its back. It wasn't moving, and it looked like it had wounds all over it."
After completing a necropsy — an animal autopsy — FWC said on Monday that the manatee died from "chronic cold stress" and that there was "no evidence of gunshot wounds."
"Manatees cannot tolerate prolonged exposure to very cold water (below 68º F)" the agency shared.
Lang said he called Largo police after finding the animal in the waterway. Once they got on scene, he said law enforcement towed it away with a boat.
While Lang sees manatees and wildlife in his community often, he said it's unusual to make such a discovery.
"They come in here to meet a lot because this is shallow water," he said. "There's a lot of plant life so they eat all that stuff, and we've seen them meeting here. We have dolphins here. We have mullets jumping all the time, so it's not that unusual to see manatees. But, I've never seen a dead one floating here."