Manatees regular visitors to N.C. coast, researcher finds
SOUTHEASTERN, NC (StarNewsOnline.com) — Those who think they may have seen a manatee swimming through marinas and waters in the Cape Fear region recently are not seeing things.
A local researcher has found a constant presence of manatees that traveled north of their natural Florida habitat each summer to swim and graze on sea grass in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia.
Erin Cummings is part of the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s marine mammal stranding program as well as a marine mammal aerial survey. As a lab technician for the program, Cummings published her research on manatees that charted reported sightings of manatees along the North Carolina coast back to the 1990s. Cummings even discovered some reported manatee sightings in North Carolina dating to the 1930s.
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