Manatees in zoo and aquarium settings are predominantly rescued individuals undergoing rehabilitation or requiring long-term care due to permanent injury. Their welfare needs are specialist and demand careful management.
Manatee welfare in captivity centres on their physiological requirements and the legitimacy of their captive status. For rehabilitating individuals, welfare-positive management supports recovery and release readiness — maintaining wild behaviour and avoiding excessive human dependency. For permanently captive manatees (typically those with boat strike injuries making survival in the wild impossible), welfare priorities are comfort, appropriate temperature, dietary variety, and social contact with conspecifics where possible. The ethics of using permanently injured manatees in public display while providing their care is contested — the welfare of the individual must remain primary over display value.