“Mother, mother ocean, I have heard you call

Wanted to sail upon your waters since I was three feet tall

You’ve seen it all, you’ve seen it all…”

The music flowed through the old wooden building, past and around me on the faded navy couch. Across from me was the singer, the leader of the climate hope and grief retreat I was attending. In his jeans and flannel shirt, strumming a dark wood acoustic guitar, the lyrics seemed very apropos for the occasion. “I wonder who this song is by,” I wondered. Such a beautiful song. With the line “I am a pirate,” I thought, “Ah, I bet that’s Jimmy Buffet.” A quick Google confirmed my suspicions.   

I smiled, considering the strange and moving subtle presence Jimmy Buffet has been throughout my life.

As a kid, my dad had a Best of Jimmy Buffet tape. It was one of many, many best of tapes he had, a veritable smorgasbord of classic rock. He’d play it on our road trips to visit relatives in New Jersey and driving up to hike in the Adirondack mountains.

For some inexplicable reason, I hated it. Most of the songs were okay – even Margaritaville – but Cheeseburger in Paradise rubbed me the wrong way. I would complain that it was so stupid, so pointless. My dad didn’t care – he wasn’t going to change his music for my whining.

As I grew older, my dislike for the song became a family in-joke. My mom would mention Cheeseburger in Paradise and I’d roll my eyes in teenage and then young adult embarrassment.

Eventually, my annoyance turned to fondness. Thinking of the very silly song brought a smile to my face rather than a grimace. Hearing Jimmy Buffet makes me think of my dad and his consistent remark of approval for songs: “This’s a good one.”

But it wasn’t until Jimmy Buffet passed away last year that I realized how much he really meant to me – like so often with people.

I say that my environmental “origin story” happened on a trip to Homosassa Springs State Park in Florida, when I was in third grade. Gazing through their plexiglass underwater “fish tank for humans” at the manatees in the springs outside, I fell in love. Later that day, I also found out they were endangered. I could see the large, deep scars from when boats had collided with these gentle, slow-moving creatures.

I returned home with a newfound passion. When I went back to school, I talked my class into adopting a manatee through the Save the Manatee Club. It was my first act of activism.

But what I didn’t know was the role that the singer of my despised song played in protecting the gentle creatures I loved. A little more than a decade earlier, Buffett had co-founded the Save the Manatees Club. The club worked to pass laws limiting boat speeds in manatee habitat, supporting enforcement of those laws, and rehabilitating injured manatees.

And it worked! After years of being critically endangered, manatee populations started recovering, largely thanks to the Save the Manatee Club. By the time I wrote a college paper on manatees, they still weren’t doing well, but were doing a lot better. I was relieved and hopeful, especially as someone studying conservation.

Then, like every conservation issue, along came a different issue. Recently, there has been a major decrease in manatees’ needed food (sea grass) due to algae blooms from pollution. Between habitat loss, red tides, continued harassment / boat encounters, and food loss, manatees are once again struggling. In the past two years, 1,300 manatees have died – a staggering 20 percent of the population.

On top of all of that, manatees are no longer protected under the Endangered Species Act. Their recovery was so successful that the Fish and Wildlife Service downgraded them to threatened in 2017. So there are a lot fewer ways to protect them than there once was. And on top of it all, the ever-present threat of what the next administration brings.

Despite all of that, I still have some hope. Not optimism – I’m a realist. But hope that perhaps something can be done, that action can make a difference. As writer Rebecca Solnit said in 2016, “Hope is a gift you don’t have to surrender, a power you don’t have to throw away.” Personally, I haven’t totally lost the “we’re going to adopt a manatee!” spirit I had coming back from my vacation in elementary school.

For me, much of that hope is based on the dedication and hard work of people who cared about manatees way back when I first fell in love with them. The Save the Manatee Club is not only still around, but now they’re joined by so many other environmental organizations that advocate for manatees. The Club’s work helped people fall in love with these creatures and built a base that could be motivated to action. Without that old pirate singer, Jimmy Buffett, manatees might not even still be around to try to protect.

The other part of my hope comes from the fact that there are still things we can do. You can submit a comment to the Fish and Wildlife Service to encourage them to expand the manatees’ protected habitat. This act would allow manatees more space to forage for food. In 2023, the agency also announced its intent to complete a status review as to whether or not to reclassify them as endangered again. While that seems like a bad thing, it would actually allow the agency to put far more protections in place.

It’s funny how people influence you in deep ways that you don’t even realize until later. How songs about hamburgers, margaritas, and being a pirate end up resonating very differently when you yourself reach the age that he’s speaking about in the song. And how people who you sometimes treat with distain can protect some of the things most precious to you.