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"This year, there were three dead manatees, five dead buffalo. We found more than 10 caimans. We found turtles, capybaras, birds, thousands of dead fish," she said last June.

Plastic straws were also noted sticking out of sea turtle nostrils, and sickening or killing seabirds, fish, manatees, dolphins and other marine mammals.

New research suggests that while manatees are an indelible part of Florida's seascape, they might also be relatively new residents in the Sunshine State.

"The first time I got into the water with manatees, I saw them being super playful with each other. They were curious and inquisitive," he said.

“If people understood the life, the importance, the habits of these creatures — whether sharks or whales or manatees — they would acquire a reverence,” Mr. Ellis told The New York Times in 2012.