{"id":398251,"date":"2026-09-13T00:04:31","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T00:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/398251\/"},"modified":"2026-09-13T00:04:31","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T00:04:31","slug":"manatee-found-dead-off-ben-t-davis-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/398251\/","title":{"rendered":"Manatee found dead off Ben T. Davis Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There have been 469 manatee deaths in Florida between Jan. 1 and Sept. 4, 2026, according to preliminary FWC data.<\/p>\n<p>TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 A manatee was found dead Sunday morning off Ben T. Davis Beach in Tampa.<\/p>\n<p>The Hillsborough County Sheriff&#8217;s Office Marine Unit responded to initial reports of the dead animal.<\/p>\n<p>Once on scene, deputies met with a marine biologist from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and towed the manatee away from swimmers at the beach.<\/p>\n<p>The FWC is investigating and working to determine a potential cause of death.<\/p>\n<p>According to preliminary FWC data, there have been 469 manatee deaths in Florida between Jan. 1 and Sept. 4, 2026. Of those, 89 deaths were caused by watercraft.<\/p>\n<p>If you see a sick, injured or dead manatee, you&#8217;re asked to call the<a href=\"https:\/\/myfwc.com\/research\/manatee\/information\/support\/contact\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">\u00a0FWC\u2019s Wildlife Alert Hotline<\/a> at 888-404-FWCC (888-404-3922). It&#8217;s helpful to take photos and videos of the animal and to remember the exact time and location you saw it.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There have been 469 manatee deaths in Florida between Jan. 1 and Sept. 4, 2026, according to preliminary&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-398251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}