The Virus, the Manatee, and the Biologist

Early on a summer morning in northern Florida, four of the world's most endangered mammals, looking a lot like gigantic gray Idaho potatoes, crowd together at the bottom of a concrete pool, gently bumping into one another as the green ocean water drains away beneath them. Two veterinarians and a physician peer down at white spots on the animals' skin. Then they descend concrete stairs into the eight-foot-deep pool and start to work, surrounded by a dozen assistants and chattering spectators. The 1,500-pound manatees lie still. Gregory Bossart, tanned, blond, and barefoot, rubs disinfectant on the manatees' lesions, sprays them with alcohol, and carefully slices them away with a scalpel. He is a vet, a wildlife pathologist, and the director of marine mammal research and conservation at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution in Fort Pierce, on the other side of the state. Alfred Bennett Jenson, a white-haired M.D. from the ...