Soirée for Seagrass helps protect meadows feeding manatees

Speaker at a previous Soirée for Seagrass at Manatee Lagoon. [Photo by Manatee Lagoon]

At Manatee Lagoon in West Palm Beach, the best chance to see a manatee comes in winter, when the animals gather in warm water flowing from a power plant. Some manatees live in Lake Worth Lagoon year-round, grazing in seagrass meadows along the lagoon floor. If those meadows disappear, the animals can go hungry.

Protecting that food supply is the focus of Friends of Manatee Lagoon’s fifth annual Soirée for Seagrass on Friday, Nov. 13, from 6 to 9 p.m. at Manatee Lagoon. The fundraiser supports seagrass research.

The evening includes dinner, drinks, and live and silent auctions and features a four-minute preview of a three-part film series on the lagoon. For the first time, the soirée will be entirely outdoors, with tents along the waterfront.

The 2025 event brought in more than $210,000 from tickets and sponsorships, says Sarah Marmion, the executive director of Friends of Manatee Lagoon. The nonprofit hopes to exceed that figure this year. 

Marmion helped open Manatee Lagoon while working for Florida Power & Light, which operates the neighboring plant. Friends of Manatee Lagoon began as a way to support and expand the center.

“Our mission had to be bigger than just a physical building,” she says. “And so over time it’s evolved into this nonprofit that is certainly committed to protecting manatees, but also increasingly their habitat, specifically seagrass.”

A die-off along Florida’s Atlantic coast brought that larger mission into focus. Algae blooms wiped out nearly three-quarters of the seagrass in the Indian River Lagoon between 2011 and 2020, according to NOAA Fisheries. State and federal wildlife officials later determined that a shortage of food in the lagoon led to widespread manatee starvation from 2020 to 2022.

“Sure, we want to protect manatees and tell the world to be careful and pay attention to speed limits. … But if you don’t talk about their primary food source, what’s the point?” Marmion says. “It’s a much larger conversation.”

Seagrass beds also shelter young fish and help keep the water clear by holding sediment in place.

Palm Beach Atlantic University assistant biology professors Rachel Harris and Maddison Melchionna are studying seagrass with funding from Friends of Manatee Lagoon, which covers lab costs and wages for student interns.

The team collects floating seagrass fragments and plants them in nursery tanks at Manatee Lagoon. Researchers take samples to the lab for DNA analysis, which can help trace where the plants came from. They also study the microbes associated with healthy and stressed seagrass beds.

“We’re trying to determine which seagrass species have the highest chance of survival when they’re transplanted into the lagoon,” Marmion says.

The team is contributing to a statewide seagrass genetics library maintained by Mote Marine Laboratory, Marmion says. The library enables researchers to compare seagrass from different parts of Florida to inform restoration efforts.

Last year’s fundraiser helped pay for the film series. Made in partnership with Palm Beach County’s Department of Environmental Resources Management, the series traces the history of Lake Worth Lagoon and follows the people rebuilding its habitat.

“They’re out there every day working hard in the water, dragging nets, building barrier islands,” Marmion says of the county’s team, which also counts seahorses, other fish and birds. “They’re using science to document changes.”

She says the nonprofit plans to post all three films and the four-minute preview on the Friends of Manatee Lagoon website. She and film producer Katie Carpenter will discuss the series Saturday, Nov. 21, during the free Manatee Season Kickoff at Manatee Lagoon. The kickoff runs from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

To show why people in Wellington and Royal Palm Beach should care about the lagoon, Marmion points to a scene that follows the canals from inland Palm Beach County toward the coast. “Whether or not they look at the lagoon every day, where they live has an impact on the health of the lagoon.”

Rain can wash grass clippings off pavement into storm drains. As the clippings break down, they release nitrogen and phosphorus, which can fuel algae blooms. Dense blooms block the sunlight seagrass needs to grow.

Sweeping clippings back onto the lawn reduces the amount of those nutrients in the water, according to UF/IFAS Extension. In Palm Beach County, canals such as the C-51 carry runoff from inland areas into the estuary, as documented in the county’s Lake Worth Lagoon management plan.

Marmion also urges boaters to drop anchor clear of seagrass beds, where a dragging anchor can tear up plants.

“There is hope,” she says. “But the future is up to us.”

The Soirée for Seagrass takes place at Manatee Lagoon, 6000 N. Flagler Drive, West Palm Beach. Tickets are $250. For details, visit the Friends of Manatee Lagoon event page.