Manatees are large herbivorous (plant-eating) marine mammals. Antillean manatees are found along the Mexican Gulf of America coastline, down through Central America, and continuing to Brazil’s northeastern Atlantic coastline, as well as in the Caribbean Greater Antilles.

The Antillean manatee is sparsely distributed throughout the Caribbean and the northwestern Atlantic Ocean, from Mexico, east to the Greater Antilles, and south to Brazil.

The Antillean manatee is found along the Gulf of America coast, through the Caribbean, and along Brazil’s northeastern Atlantic coastline. The species occurs in a patchy distribution from northern Mexico to the northeastern coast of Brazil, as well as in the Caribbean.

Found throughout the coastal waters of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, Antillean manatees face increasing threats from pollution, fishing, and watercraft collisions. What is the Antillean...

There are three accepted living species of Trichechidae, representing three of the four living species in the order Sirenia: the Amazonian manatee (Trichechus inunguis), the West Indian manatee (Trichechus manatus), and the West African manatee (Trichechus senegalensis).

For the Antillean manatee, the Service is proposing 78,121 acres of critical habitat in Puerto Rico. Approximately 74,350 acres of the proposed critical habitat for the Antillean manatee overlap with critical habitat for the elkhorn and staghorn corals.

Description: Antillean manatees are large marine mammals with a walrus-like shaped body that tapers to a wide paddle-shaped tail. Although similar in appearance to seals and walruses, their closest living relatives are the elephant, aardvark and hyrax (a small animal that closely resembles a rodent).

To document what is known about Antillean manatees in Hispaniola, identify knowledge gaps, and recommend relevant conservation actions to protect the manatee population in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, I reviewed historical and contemporary information on the species in English, Spanish and French.

sirenian, (order Sirenia), any of four large aquatic mammalian species now living primarily in tropical waters where food plants grow. The three species of manatee (genus Trichechus) occupy warm latitudes of the coastal Atlantic and associated rivers, and the dugong (Dugong dugon) inhabits the coastlines of the Indian and Pacific oceans.

The Antillean Manatee (Trichechus manatus manatus), a subspecies of the West Indian Manatee, is a remarkable marine mammal found in the coastal waters and rivers of the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.