34 minute read
Sleepless in America
WELL-BEING
Sleepless in America
Modern technology and the COVID-19 pandemic are leaving more people vulnerable to sleep deprivation
By Jackson Elliott
The bright lights and work demands of modern life create a hidden sleep crisis that affects Americans in countless ways,
experts say.
During the age of COVID-19, sleep issues have gotten worse.
Most adults need 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night, but 1 in 3 Americans gets less than seven hours in a typical day, according to the American Sleep Association.
Among young adults, 37 percent reported poor sleep duration.
During the pandemic, these numbers have gotten worse.
“Across the board, health behaviors, mental health, and things like insomnia have all been moving in a worse direction because of the lack of health care services and the prevalence of stress and unpredictable schedules on Americans,” said sleep expert Dr. Yelena Chernyak.
Sleep loss has been on the rise since at least 1991, according to Gallup poll numbers. The 1990s were a time when personal computer ownership rose rapidly.
The two trends might be connected, experts say, with sleep problems tracing back to two main sources—excessive work and excessive screen time.
“Sleep is not a luxury,” Dr. Abhinav Singh said. “It’s a biological necessity.”
But sleep is boring, Singh said. Screens are entertaining. Consistently, Americans have chosen them instead.
“When you’re hungry, what do you look for? Food. When you’re thirsty, what do you look for? A glass of water. When you’re sleepy, what do you look for? The ‘next episode’ button,” Singh said.
The average American now gets 6 1/2 hours of sleep per night, he said. This habit strains the body and can cause countless other health issues.
Lost sleep now means higher blood pressure, waste remains in the brain, higher blood sugar, and clogged blood
37
PERCENT
of young adults report experiencing poor sleep duration, according to the American Sleep Association.
Studies show that
Americans work about 25 percent more than Europeans. Often, people who feel overworked find free time by sacrificing sleep. Most adults need seven to nine hours of sleep each night, but 1 in 3 Americans gets less than seven hours in a typical day.
vessels, Singh said. These issues can cause heart disease, early-onset Alzheimer’s, and other problems.
But American culture sees sleep loss as a trophy, Singh said. Americans are proud that they did something more valuable with their time than sleep.
“Sleeping is still equated with laziness, being demotivated, not interested, complacent, all these adjectives falsely get added to sleeping. It’s looked at as negative.”
Sleeping five hours or less can increase the chances of dying of all causes by 15 percent, according to studies.
“There should be a warning on all those streaming websites.”
Sleep’s Rival
Most doctors say our sleep schedules started collapsing with the invention of the electric light. The popularization of screen devices was another turning point, said Dr. Angela Drake, a University of California–Davis clinical professor. One problem technology has created is a higher amount of disturbed sleep.
“Theincreaseinsleepdisturbancesreally started with computers and computer gaming,evenbeforetheinternet,”shesaid.
Drake said that many of her patients spend all night using electronic tablets, shopping, using the internet, or on technology.
“I had a lady who woke up every night at 4 o’clock and she would read on her iPad,” Drake said.
Experiments suggest that sleep cleans the brain, cements learning, heals the body, improves metabolism, and performs several other important functions.
Once the woman switched the tablet for a normal book, the sleep problems disappeared, she said.
Although scientists agree that sleep is important, they still have little idea how sleep works.
“Every animal in the universe has to sleep. If you don’t sleep, you don’t live,” Drake said.
Experiments suggest that sleep cleans
Sleep is boring, an expert says. Screens are entertaining. Consistently, Americans choose them instead.
the brain, cements learning, heals the body, improves metabolism, and performs several other important functions.
At least one rare genetic disease, fatal familial insomnia, makes people become unable to sleep, Drake said. Those who suffer from it die within three years, even if nothing else is wrong with them.
Even in less extreme cases, sleeplessness can cause problems including diabetes, weight gain, mood issues, depression, and vehicle accidents.
“Anything that causes inefficient sleep is going to increase your risk for a lot of long-term diseases, because it basically just creates an inflammatory state in your body,” said Dr. Kori Ascher, a sleep expert.
According to estimates from the research organization RAND Corporation, the United States likely loses $411 billion per year to mistakes and inefficiency caused by lack of sleep.
Accident reports on events such as the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and the crash of American Airlines Flight 1420 all likely had lost sleep as a factor.
Sleep loss also affects problems that often prove harder to measure, psychologist Dr. Nicholas Kardaras said. Studies have shown that lost sleep impacts impulsive action.
“If you’re not getting that really good sleep, you seem distracted and error [prone], irritable, and jittery, and jumpy the next day,” he said.
Unending Daylight
Modern life and now the COVID-19 pandemic leave people vulnerable to sleep deprivation.
People stay up all night playing video games because the games throw off the body’s sense of time, Kardaras said. The excitement from gaming also keeps people awake.
“It spikes dopamine as much as a sexual experience, and it spikes adrenaline pretty high,” he said.
Gaming researchers design games to spike blood pressure and keep people excited, Kardaras said. Light from screens
also throws off the sleep cycle.
“The blue screen itself, the radiant screen, disrupts our circadian sleep cycle,” Kardaras said. “Our brains and our nervous systems process that as daytime.”
Kardaras runs an Austin, Texas, clinic for young people addicted to video games.
Often his patients suffer from a severe lack of sleep, he said. Once they start sleeping normally, their personalities change for the better.
“They become almost entirely different people,” he said. “They’re more focused, they’re calmer, they’re less anxious, less depressed.
“Just sleep is a critical ingredient to our mental well-being and gaming does do a pretty significant number on our healthy sleep patterns.”
Modern video games aren’t like older forms of entertainment, according to Dr. Stephen Amira, a sleep expert. They’re more engaging than television.
“It’s not passive. It’s meant to be engaging,” he said. “A lot of people are spending a lot of time online doing things that are not as relaxing as they had in the past.”
The internet never turns off for the night, Amira said. There’s always more to do, more to play, and more to see.
“Nothing signs off anymore,” he said.
For children, sleep is especially important, Amira said.
“We know that growth hormone in children is secreted primarily during a particular stage of sleep called ‘slow wave sleep,’” he said.
Work Culture
Compared to Europeans, Americans sleep less, according to a University of Michigan study.
This difference comes from culture, said Dr. Kori Ascher.
“We don’t put any value on sleep,” she said. “If you’re in Europe, they say go and take a nap every day.”
In America, people prioritize work and achievement more, she said. Studies show that Americans work about 25 percent more than Europeans.
Often, people who feel overworked find free time by sacrificing sleep.
This phenomenon has earned the name “revenge bedtime procrastination.”
But by trading sleep for work, people lose in the long run, according to the Sleep Foundation.
“A lack of sleep is tied to irritability and other difficulties regulating emotions. It’s also been connected to mental health disorders, such as depression and anxiety,” the foundation’s website reads.
Sleep Well
The good news is that sleep is under our control, Drake said.
“There’s no such thing as a bad sleeper,” she said. “You have learned these habits, and these ways of being, and you can learn new ways.”
According to experts, getting enough sleep is like any other health practice. It requires discipline and willingness to
Gaming researchers
design games to spike blood pressure and keep people excited. The excitement from gaming keeps people awake.
Dr. Angela Drake,
clinical professor, University of California–Davis
improve, said Drake.
If people darken their surroundings and turn off interactive electronic devices, they will usually sleep well, she said. Keeping TVs outside the bedroom also helps.
“It isn’t just the light, though, it’s the activity, it’s the noise. It’s engaging your brain.”
But patients often aren’t willing to change. As a result, fixing a sleep schedule means working together with the person in need of help, Drake said.
“If you tell people that they’ve got to take the TV out of their room, they usually won’t come back for a second appointment.”
Drake said she usually looks for compromise solutions with patients. Even small steps such as switching from playing video games to watching TV can help. Seeing good results from consistent small steps often leads to larger changes for the better.
Often, people who believe they are “bad sleepers” will sleep easily under the right circumstances, Drake said.
The best way to get people to prioritize sleep is by explaining its benefits, sleep expert Dr. Yelena Chernyak said. People respond poorly to negative incentives.
With more sleep, life improves in many ways, Chernyak said. People feel well-rested and perform at a higher level.
“What could you gain, and how worth it would more sleep be for you?” she asked.
PHOTO BY DAN KITWOOD/GETTY IMAGES
MONEY MARKETS
CRYPTO’S CARBON FOOTPRINT
As cryptocurrency gains in popularity, some question if it’s any less ‘green’ than fiat currency
By Nathan Worcester
IN THE YEARS SINCE THE
still-anonymous “Satoshi Nakamoto” created the first cryptocurrency, bitcoin, crypto has proven to be polarizing.
Proponents argue that cryptocurrencies offer a transparent alternative to fiat currencies such as the dollar. Crypto transactions are permanently recorded on a decentralized ledger known as a blockchain, making them potentially resistant to censorship.
For political dissidents, or for people living in economically unstable regimes, cryptocurrencies could enable free exchange and prosperity in spite of local oppression or instability.
“The majority of people on this planet do not have access to fair financial services, and Bitcoin fixes this,” Christopher
Bendiksen, bitcoin research lead at the digital asset investment firm CoinShares, told Insight via email.
Crypto has also had its share of controversy. It’s known to be volatile—the price of bitcoin fell from nearly $69,000 to roughly $35,000 between November 2021 and early January 2022.
In addition, a wave of scams has vividly illustrated the potential for crypto fraud. On Feb. 8, federal agents seized $3.6 billion worth of bitcoin stolen in the 2016 Bitfinex hack. Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan were arrested in connection with an alleged conspiracy to launder the stolen funds.
Despite these concerns, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are making leaps and bounds. A 2021 Intertrust survey of hedge fund managers revealed that respondents anticipated holding more than 7 percent of their assets in cryptocurrency within five years. Today, the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies is nearly $2 trillion, according to TradingView—a decrease from November, but a marked increase just since 2020, when its market capitalization was in the hundreds of billions.
Crypto’s surge has prompted the government to explore new regulations. The infrastructure bill passed in November 2021 includes new tax reporting requirements for cryptocurrencies. Not everyone has celebrated the prospect. Forbes described the measures as a seed for “unintended tax nightmares.”
With the Biden administration and major international financial institutions such as BlackRock now emphasizing “environmental, social, and corporate governance” (ESG) and other environmental policies, the carbon footprint of cryptocurrencies has steadily gained attention, including from lawmakers in the Democratic-controlled House and Senate. On Jan. 20, the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations panel held a hearing on the environmental impact of cryptocurrency.
The Federal Reserve, the United States’ central bank, has articulated similar concerns. In a January publication outlining the potential for a central bank digital currency, the Federal Reserve
listed crypto’s energy footprint among what it described as shortcomings of cryptocurrency.
The Fed’s stance is apparently in keeping with that of Biden’s latest nominees to it.
Sarah Bloom Raskin, Biden’s pick for vice chair for supervision of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, has written for Ceres that “we must rebuild with an economy where the values of sustainability are explicitly embedded in market valuation,” in part by ensuring regulators promote measures “that will allocate capital and align portfolios toward sustainable investments that do not depend on carbon and fossil fuels.” The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board accused her of wanting to “politicize Fed bank supervision, especially on climate.”
Raskin and another Biden nominee for the Fed, Lisa Cook, drew unfeigned faint praise from the Hoover Institution’s John Cochrane.
“Lisa Cook is superbly qualified, by written word, experience, and connections—if the job is to bring the Administration and progressive supporters’ racial policies to the Fed. That might mean requiring DEI or ESG practices at banks,” Cochrane, a Chicago School economist, wrote on his blog, “The Grumpy Economist.”
Business columnist Chadwick Hagan has argued that the push for more laws on crypto is all about more government revenue.
“While regulators have blamed cryptocurrency for illegal uses like funding terrorism and funding illicit drug operations, the truth of the matter is that cash is mostly used for illicit activities, not cryptocurrency. The worry is that government will be unable to tax capital gains,” Hagan wrote in The Epoch Times.
“It is my opinion that cryptocurrency helps promote overall financial literacy and financial independence,” Hagan said later.
Environmental groups aligned with the Biden administration, including the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), have also joined the push to regulate crypto. In its Explainer, “Crypto Has a Climate Problem,” the NRDC goes so far as to question whether crypto should exist in light of its purported risks to climate and the environment.
“Is it truly necessary?” asked Alfonso Pating, an NRDC financial expert, in the article.
Unsurprisingly, then, the White House is reportedly contemplating a “whole-of-government” response. Unnamed sources told Bloomberg that the White House intends to issue an executive order on cryptocurrency, possibly before the end of February. The executive order could also include comments on the central bank digital currency under consideration by the Fed.
Chadwick Hagan, business columnist
The White House didn’t respond by press time to a request for clarification on whether the cryptocurrency executive order will include any language related to climate or the environment.
Now more than ever, it seems important to step back and seek out the facts. How “green” is crypto anyway?
Crypto and the Grid
A good place to start is cryptocurrency’s electricity consumption. How much juice does crypto use?
The most authoritative answer, at least for bitcoin, may come from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF). The CCAF pegs bitcoin electricity consumption at an estimated 125.13 terawatt-hours per year, within a possible range of 49.31 to 291.587 TWh. That would put bitcoin in the same league as Argentina when it comes to electricity use. (Cambridge researchers declined to comment to Insight due to time constraints.)
Other estimates have been fairly similar. Writing in 2020, a team led by Johannes Sedlmeir of Germany’s University of Bayreuth came up with lower and upper bounds of 60 and 125 TWh for the same figure. That’s somewhere between Austria and Norway, roughly speaking.
A 2022 report from CoinShares, motivated in part by rising ESG pressures in the past year, featured a lower guess for the bitcoin network’s power consumption: 75 TWh in 2020 and 82 in 2021.
China’s 2021 ban on cryptocurrency mining had an effect on CoinShares’s projections about network draw per country. The authors didn’t assume that all activity in China had ceased, however, as they attributed all activity supposedly originating in Ireland and Germany to China—the countries, popular locations for proxy IP addresses or virtual private networks, experienced an uptick in mining at that time.
Although China does rely on coal for many existing and future power plants, the report found something unexpected: the carbon intensity of bitcoin hashing, or transaction validation, actually rose following the ban.
“While China has heavily coal-based provinces like Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, it also has provinces, Sichuan and Yunnan, that almost exclusively rely on hydroelectric power,” Bendiksen told Insight. “In China’s rainy seasons, miners often migrated and took advantage of cheap hydropower, so the chasing of cheap power by Chinese miners led to seasonal variances in emissions.
“We expect the longer-term effect of the Chinese ban will result in more steady carbon intensity, and also a reduction as miners set up operations in more welcoming political environments with abundant power that happen to have less carbon-intensive resources—the United States, with high concentration of renewables, and Russia, with nuclear and natural gas.”
A man works at a company’s main cryptocurrency mining site, where metal racks are lined with hundreds upon hundreds of graphics cards, in Gondo, Switzerland, on March 9, 2018.
Cryptocurrency’s carbon footprint is also influenced by the percentage of renewables and other lower-carbon energy sources, such as natural gas in place of coal.
Writing in Bitcoin Magazine, Alex Gladstein of the Human Rights Foundation argued that cryptocurrency mining could incentivize the development of solar, wind, and similar energy sources as well as the associated transmission infrastructure in remote parts of Africa, where corruption and dependence often make foreign aid counterproductive to development.
Crypto miners can also curb emissions by using ‘stranded’ dry natural gas in oil fields. That gas cannot be profitably transported elsewhere, meaning it would otherwise be vented or flared. Flaring generates methane, a greenhouse gas that is believed to have an even more powerful effect on climate than carbon dioxides. Bitcoin miners are beginning to take advantage of this byproduct of physical mining by siting their rigs near oilfields.
CoinShares’s analysis also situated cryptocurrency in the context of global finance by comparing its carbon intensity with that of the gold sector as well as that of minting and printing fiat currency. At 41 megatons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, crypto fell between fiat currency, at 8 Mts per year, and the gold industry, at 100 to 145 Mts per annum.
Bendiksen of CoinShares noted the difficulty of calculating all the emissions associated with fiat currency: “The energy/ emissions of printing/minting fiat currency isn’t transparently published, so we reference what we have determined as comprehensive approaches to estimate these metrics.
“Information isn’t always released publicly by private banking companies and government agencies to do these calculations.”
Some analysts think the environmental costs of fiat currency, and corresponding savings from cryptocurrency, are greatly underestimated.
Peter St. Onge, an Austrian School economist affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, has written for CoinDesk that estimates of cryptocurrency’s carbon footprint should account for various wasteful or otherwise carbon-intensive features of the existing economic order—most notably, the recessions and associated boom-bust cycles that St. Onge attributes to fiat currency.
By that measure, central banking is, according to St. Onge, “vastly more polluting than Bitcoin, indeed more polluting than the worst industrial offender you could imagine. Bitcoin, by implication, is among the most green technologies humanity has ever invented.”
These prospective savings notwithstanding, bitcoin’s significant energy use in the here and now has caused blowback. In May 2021, Elon Musk announced that Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin for vehicle purchases.
“We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel,” Musk wrote in a Tweet.
In January, Musk revealed that Teslas could be purchased using a different cryptocurrency, Dogecoin. Musk, who has said per CNBC that he owns both bitcoin and Dogecoin, has heavily promoted the latter for years, as detailed by The Motley Fool.
Tesla didn’t respond by press time to a request for comment on its choice to accept Dogecoin.
Bitcoin’s heavy energy consumption is driven in large part by its consensus mechanism for verifying and securing transactions.
Bitcoin, like Dogecoin and many other cryptocurrencies, uses a mechanism called “proof of work” (PoW). Proof of work pits miners across the world against each other as they try to solve a complex mathematical problem. The fastest to the finish line wins digital currency.
Dogecoin, by contrast, relies on “proof of stake” (PoS), whereby miners stake a certain number of coins to be eligible for random selection to review a new block. If their review doesn’t contain any mistakes, the miners gain digital currency. In proof of stake, participants who stake more coins have more mining power.
Proof of stake uses far less energy than proof of work, spurring environmental organizations such as the NRDC to endorse it. One of the largest cryptocurrencies, Ethereum, is moving to a proofof-stake model.
But Bendiksen of CoinShares thinks the mechanism could undercut some of crypto’s chief benefits.
“Compared to [proof of work], it is vastly inferior in terms of security, lacks trust [minimization], is not censorship-resistant, and is effectively no different than the current monetary system where those with the most money make all the decisions,” he said.
Controversial Claims and ‘Gee Whiz’ Statistics
While crypto’s overall energy impact is hard to pinpoint, it’s clearly making a dent on global electricity use. Yet some researchers have gone further in their criticism, arguing that cryptocurrencies alone could drive a significant amount of global warming.
In an 2018 paper, “Bitcoin emissions alone could push global warming above 2 C,” a University of Hawaii at Manoa team led by Camilo Mora projected an extremely high rate of adoption for Bitcoin. They asserted that the associated electricity use would be enough to cause 2 degrees Celsius of warming through the emission of carbon dioxide.
The paper and its conclusions have gone on to influence the discussion of cryptocurrency and the environment—the Sierra Club Pennsylvania, for instance, has cited 2 degrees Celsius of warming as a possibility in a 2012 blog entry.
The analysis has been controversial, to say the least.
“It is probably the single most discredited paper ever written on mining—to the point where it triggered no less than three debunking articles in the same publication as it was originally published. Its methodology is entirely inappropriate and indicates a complete lack of understanding of even the most elementary facets of mining,” said Bendiksen of CoinShares.
A 2019 “Matters Arising” paper from Northwestern University’s Eric Masanet and others outlined some of the analysis’s deficiencies, including out-of-date information on bitcoin mining efficiency and an implausibly rapid increase in bitcoin transactions.
In the years since the Mora paper was published, bitcoin transactions per day have remained relatively flat, at times decreasing, according to data from YCharts.
Echoing other criticisms, Sedlmeir and colleagues argued that Mora’s paper revealed a misunderstanding of the energy demands of crypto.
Reached for comment by Insight, Mora said via email that “as far as I know the paper remain[s] valid.”
Another co-author, Erik Franklin, defended the paper to Insight.
“At the time of the study, there was discussion about Bitcoin being adopted broadly for day-to-day consumer transactions. Our work provided a scenario that assessed what would happen if Bit-
coin replaced credit card transactions and how the energy use from those Bitcoin transactions would contribute to greenhouse gas emissions,” he said in an email, noting he and his co-authors published a reply to the debunking articles.
“The main goal of the study was to generate discussion about the scale of potential environmental impacts of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which we achieved given the global attention it has received as well as the numerous follow-up studies that built on our work.”
In Erikson’s view, the environment is still at risk from the growth and concomitant energy demands of crypto, regardless of any changes in the composition of the grid or the adoption of PoS.
“In general, a move toward more efficient hardware and algorithms and greater use of renewables as a power source should decrease relative environmental impacts but these improvements are easily offset by the continued growth in the cryptocurrency sector, which just adds more overall energy demand,” he said.
The NRDC’s report on cryptocurrency has also drawn expert criticism, in part for advocating PoS over PoW.
“It’s likely legally difficult for governments to outlaw ‘proof of work infrastructure, but there are ways the government could incentivize switching over to the less computationally intensive (and therefore less carbon-consuming) verification process,” it stated.
Bendiksen of CoinShares told Insight that the NRDC is wrong to dismiss PoW
$2 TRILLION
Today, the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies is nearly $2 trillion, according to TradingView. La Geo geothermal power plant in Berlin, El Salvador, on Oct. 22, 2021. After declaring bitcoin legal tender alongside the U.S. dollar, the Salvadoran government mines cryptocurrency, with hundreds of computers in the plant powered by the Tecapa volcano.
on the basis of energy use, given its other advantages over PoS.
“As for PoS, it’s simply not appropriate for a global monetary system like bitcoin,” he said. “The whole point of bitcoin is to move away from the legacy oligarchic structures, so PoS is simply not a good fit for bitcoin. PoS may very well be appropriate for NFTs, gaming Apps, and other less-serious use cases, but not for something as important as global money.”
Extreme claims about the environmental impact of digital technology are nothing new. A commentary in the periodical Joule, “Does Not Compute,” outlines some of the ways analysts have been prone to overstating the negative consequence of innovations in IT such as the pace of data center growth. The authors cited the Mora paper as an example of erroneous research that has nevertheless been highly cited. Google Scholar records 177 references to the paper.
According to the commentary, breathless journalism may be partly to blame: “A recurrent theme is that well-intentioned research often overestimates IT’s electricity use and climate impacts, sometimes by orders of magnitude. These results then become ‘factoids’ that spread quickly as people share them and the media report them.”
“People are fascinated by ‘gee whiz’ statistics,” Jonathan Koomey, a researcher and author of the commentary, told Insight by email. (Koomey was a co-author on the paper from Masanet and colleagues critiquing the Mora paper).
Koomey pointed out the extremely wide range of projected electricity usage by bitcoin in the Cambridge statistics.
“There’s still a factor of 10 from the low to high estimates, so we really don’t understand these systems very well,” he said.
Koomey’s comments suggest a useful rule of thumb: When it comes to assessing crypto’s environmental impact, a little humility goes a long way.
SPOTLIGHT
DOG CAPSULE
A WOMAN CARRYING HER DOG
in a transparent pet carrier backpack arrives on the island of Basse-Terre, in the French Antilles, on Feb. 12.
THE RACE TO SAVE STARVING
MANATEES
Federal authorities are likely to decide in the fall whether to officially change the designation of the West Indian manatee—the official name of the Florida species—back to endangered. F lorida’s manatees gently glide through the state’s rivers and along coastal beaches like great grey footballs, endearing themselves to residents and tourists alike.
The half-ton whiskery mammals are celebrated throughout the state on T-shirts, license plates, and with huggable stuffed toys in their likeness.
Tourists and locals converge on inland waterways during winter, donning dive gear and plunging into chilly waters when manatees migrate inland in massive numbers each year.
Enraptured humans hope simply to snap photos of the sea cows moving through the water lazily with curious calves. The peaceful animals exude an aura of complete contentedness, seemingly unafraid.
But now, when ocean temperatures dip below 68 degrees, waterways on the state’s Atlantic coast have become nightmarish for the thousands of manatees seeking refuge from the cold there.
Long their winter sanctuary, the coastline has become a place of starvation.
As of Jan. 28, 97 manatees had died this year, with 64 in Brevard County, the epicenter of the starvation crisis. During the same 28-day period at the beginning of last year, 170 manatees perished.
But that’s probably because January this year was mostly warm. It’s the cold that complicates matters for manatees, and as temperatures dip, wildlife authorities predict deaths will go up. By how many, they can’t say.
Last year, more than 1,100 manatees died. That’s about 13 percent of the manatee population. The animals had spent 50 years on the endangered species list and were only recently reclassified as threatened in 2017.
So understandably, Floridians’ hearts are breaking over a crisis that has the beloved animals dying in record numbers along the coastline.
The cause: the obliteration of their food source. Seagrasses in areas where many seek warmth in winter have been wiped out by water pollution.
For now, there’s no end to the crisis in sight, government wildlife authorities say. To look for solutions, a partnership was formed in 2021 between the
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). They’re working together now to combat what they’re calling an Unusual Mortality Event (UME).
Since coming together to solve the problem, the agencies have navigated mostly discouraging reports on the situation.
In recent days, scientists working on a short-term fix rejoiced about a major breakthrough.
IN MID-JANUARY, RESEARCHERS decided to take desperate measures that go against the first rule in dealing with wildlife. They started trying to feed the wild manatees.
More bad news followed. About two weeks into the team effort involving state and federal authorities and wildlife-related nonprofits, the project looked to be a failure. The manatees are used to nibbling on slim delicately undulating seagrasses underwater and don’t recognize floating heads of lettuce as food.
But in the last days of January, as forecasts predicted deadly cold, workers tossing romaine and butterhead bunches to the starving animals saw what looked like a miracle.
Manatees were munching.
More good news followed. As they’d hoped once a few of the hungry herbivores recognized broad, bright-green, lettuce leaves as food, others began eagerly chomping too. Soon, clusters of manatees clamored for a taste, poking their noses to the surface to gobble the floating vegetation.
Now, trucks hauling lettuce are delivering about 2,500 pounds daily to an area set up for feeding the animals at a Florida Power and Light natural gas power plant in Brevard County. The area is off-limits to spectators and boaters as scientists work as fast as they can to stabilize the health of as many animals as possible.
On the chilliest recent days, up to 750 animals bunched into the site. It isn’t clear exactly how many are eating and how much they’re getting, authorities told reporters on Feb. 2 in a video conference.
A healthy adult manatee needs to eat about 4 to 9 percent of its body weight per day. That’s 40 to 90 pounds of vegetation.
But the successful feeding program
THE CAUSE OF RECENT MANATEE DEATHS
(From top, L–R) A keeper at ZooTampa at Lowry Park throws lettuce to manatees being brought back to good health, on Jan. 13. Orphan manatee Tober takes his bottle of baby formula as part of his round-the-clock care. Wild manatees gather for a feeding in a Brevard County, Fla., waterway near a power plant on Feb. 4. A manatee care team member places lettuces into a feeder for manatees at ZooTampa's Manatee Critical Care Center on Jan. 19, 2021. is a cause for hope. And scientists say they’re thankful to be learning lessons that will help them feed wild manatees next winter too. It’s almost certain the remaining population will need the help, authorities say.
Efforts to replant seagrass beds that would sustain the remaining manatee population naturally have begun. But there are significant obstacles, authorities say. They expect progress will be slow. They’re not sure how long it will take to regrow the seagrasses needed, FWC spokeswoman Carli Segelson said.
Permits must be obtained, so other agencies can be sure the efforts won’t cause other problems while attempting to solve this one.
Donor seagrass beds are practically nonexistent in places where harvest could be practical, authorities told reporters. So seagrasses now are being grown for transplant in upland nurseries.
And the need to improve water quality so that newly started seagrass beds can grow and flourish is a problem that has no easy answer, authorities admit. But part of the plan involves restoring clam and oyster beds. Those creatures naturally filter the water around them.
The vexing seagrass die-off began due to pollution from the run-off of yard fertilizer, sewage, pet waste, and other sources. As nutrients from those pollutants streamed into waterways, algae growth exploded.
ALGAE CLOUDS the water, blocking sunlight. Without sunlight, seagrasses die.
Most animals simply move on when their habitat runs out of food. Not manatees.
Water temperatures colder than 68 degrees make them sick. Their bulbous bodies aren’t covered in insulating blubber to protect them against cold. Most of an adult manatee’s 10-foot-long frame is muscle.
So as coastal waters chill, manatees seek spring-fed waterways that stay 72 degrees year-round, or they find their way to areas where power plants supply heated discharge from cooling towers.
There are about 67 sites, natural and manmade, where manatees find warmth around the state. They often visit the same places year after year.
About half the population has become reliant on power plant discharge canals, authorities say. But as power production decreases, less warm water flows into waterways where manatees have come to expect relief.
A task force now is working on a warm-water habitat action plan and hopes to wean the animals off reliance on power plants and direct them to naturally warmer areas.
Thousands of manatees are drawn each year to what used to be a safe harbor for them within the Indian River Lagoon, a
156-mile biodiverse habitat along Florida’s East Coast. About 4,400 plant and animal species live there.
Though seagrasses have been in decline there since 2011, the migratory manatees kept coming, and eating, until there was nothing left for them. Now, unable to leave the area because of deadly-cold water temperatures beyond the lagoon, the animals are stuck there with nothing to eat.
Necropsies reveal many of the starving animals have resorted to ingesting sand off the seafloor in an attempt to survive. Many of the dead are lactating mothers who have higher calorie demands while nursing their calves for a year.
That has left orphans. Some of these babies, along with adult animals spotted in the worst condition, are being rescued and transported to a network of facilities willing to take in manatees for rehabilitation. The hope is to make them well enough for eventual release where there’s warm water and more food. That’s often on the state’s western side, bordered by the Gulf of Mexico.
Keepers at ZooTampa at Lowry Park, SeaWorld, and others have been treating and releasing manatees for decades. Boat strikes used to be the most common reason animals needed their help.
In the first four weeks of this year, 14 manatees were rescued and transported to rehab facilities. As of the first week in February, about a dozen more had been spotted in need of rescue, authorities said.
But rescue efforts are difficult, especially on days when chilly temperatures cause animals to congregate in clusters. The hope is to attempt rescues of those in the most distress at the first sign of warmer weather, authorities said.
Biologistsunderstandhowheart-wrenchingtheproblemisforFloridians,wholove their state’s iconic creature. But taking matters into their own hands and throwing food to the animals could make matters worse. It also happens to be against thelaw,onethatauthoritieswon’thesitate to prosecute.
The reason is that trying to feed wild manatees or offer them drinks from a hose—something the animals seem to enjoy—may encourage them to stay year-round in waterways that can’t provide enough food or warmth for them, researchers say. During the team’s feedings, workers hide behind screens so the animals won’t associate the suddenly appearing food with humans.
The best way for Floridians to help manatees is to report distressed, dead, or tagged animals by calling the state wildlife hotline at 888-404-3922 (FWCC). Manatees in distress may seem to come up for air too frequently or may list to one side while swimming.
Having a photo or video of suspicious manatee behavior that can be sent to the hotline operator can help.
Teams try to remove all manatee carcasses because those aren’t good for waterways either.
POSSIBLY THE BIGGEST heartbreak of all, say members of three wildlife organizations, is that the manatee starvation problem didn’t have to happen. It was totally preventable, they say.
Wildlife advocates pointed out the need to take action to protect manatee habitat in 2008, during the George W. Bush administration.
A year into the presidency of Barack Obama, the agency finally acknowledged the need to take action, but nothing was ever done, says Jaclyn Lopez of the Center for Biological Diversity.
Her group, along with Defenders of Wildlife and the Save the Manatee Club, filed a lawsuit on Feb. 1 against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The lawsuit says the agency didn’t follow the law requiring administrators to designate protected habitats for manatees.
“The lawsuit is directed to the federal agency, and as a matter of policy, the USFWS does not comment on ongoing litigation,” Chuck Underwood, a spokesman for the agency, told Insight.
The saddest part is that the animals’ suffering and the potential loss of the species could have been avoided altogether, Lopez says.
Government scientists don’t believe the problem will lead to extinction or even near-extinction, Segelson told Insight.
By fall, federal authorities are likely to decide whether to officially change the designation of the West Indian manatee—the official name of the Florida species—back to endangered, Segelson said.
Lopez says government scientists long “have known this ecosystem was in colA sign asks people to please watch out for manatees on the Homosassa River in Homosassa, Fla., on Oct. 5, 2021.
lapse,” and had seagrass been listed as an element needing to be monitored, as the groups had suggested 14 years ago, “perhaps the [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] would have realized much earlier that the water-quality standards it approved for the [Indian River Lagoon] were inadequate to protect manatees and their habitat.”
The Center for Biological Diversity is a national nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.7 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
The Save the Manatee Club has advocated for manatees since 1981 through scientific research, education, public awareness, and legislative action. Defenders of Wildlife has nearly 2.2 million members and activists focused on protecting all native plants and animals and their habitats.
“In the broadest sense,” Lopez said, the problem was “totally preventable—in that we should be able to stop pollution at its source, detect when waters become polluted, and take swift action to improve water quality.
“In a nutshell, USFWS should have long ago revised critical habitat to include things like seagrass. That way, when other federal agencies authorize a project that might impact habitat, FWS could have looked at EPA’s proposal and made a decision as to whether it would destroy the habitat, which is unlawful and would require modifications of the project.”
Lopez and her colleagues hope aggressive moves to improve water quality and regrow seagrass beds can turn the problem around in time to save the manatees.
“It is possible,” she says, “but I don’t know whether it will be done.”
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