Shouldn’t this data be freely available?

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and the Tampa Bay Estuary Program’s Manatee Awareness Coalition (MAC) want to save manatees.  But for years, no mapping company’s would put the manatee and homeland security zones in Tampa Bay on the navigation maps. But now Garmin is. The information is on all new chart plotters and updated SD cards.

Kipp Frohlich, leader of the FWC’s Imperiled Species Management Section, said “This marks a breakthrough that can save a lot of manatees. We tried unsuccessfully for years to get any mapping company to put the zones in their map covers. Garmin stepped up to the plate and did it.”

This is a great story and I do appreciate that Garmin stepped up, but if we all really want to save manatees, shouldn’t this data be freely available to install on any unit? Perhaps that’s naive and it’s not how the boating navigation GPSs/charting tools work, but I thought I’d ask.

- TCPalm