Watercraft collisions cause the majority of Florida manatee injuries and deaths, with surviving animals requiring extensive rehabilitation and facing lifetime scarring, with welfare implications for both acute and chronic injury phases.
Manatee welfare encompasses both the acute trauma of boat strikes - propeller lacerations, blunt impact injuries, and submergence - and the chronic welfare implications of living with scarring, orthopedic injuries, and in some cases permanent disability. Rehabilitated manatees face extended captive periods for healing and conditioning before release. The 2021 UME, with over 1,100 deaths from starvation as seagrass collapsed from water quality decline, represented welfare suffering at population scale. Long-term manatee welfare requires both immediate watercraft speed management and the water quality restoration needed to recover the seagrass beds that support manatee feeding.