Hearing tests, environmental measurements and acoustic phenomena
may together explain why boats and animals collide It's 2
o'clock in the morning, and, wouldn't you know it, Stormy is "in
love" with that big Navy transducer again. Now I have to get in
the cold water and pry him off so we can set up for Dundee's
session. Oh, the joys of working with manatees under the Tampa
moonlight! Even though I'll be tired, cold and wet, before
sunrise we will have measured another critical aspect of the
Florida manatee's hearing abilities. Over the next seven years
of extended late-night auditory testing—more than 30,000
threshold trials in all—my wife Laura and I will measure two
teenage manatees' ability to hear, locate and discriminate
different underwater signals under various controlled acoustical
conditions. In the end, we will have laid the groundwork for a
sensory explanation for why manatees are hit repeatedly by
boats. The endangered Florida manatee, a subspecies of the West
Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus),