Manatees in the Sea of Jars

Evidence clearly suggests that the Sea of Jars was once home to a thriving community of large cetaceans, the large majority of whom have disappeared. Sea dragons appear in art as recently as the years leading up to the Wesmodian Reformation, and their bones are still sometimes found on isolated beaches or - oddly - buried in cliff faces near the sea. Such curiosities occasionally excite the interest of thaumatologists given that they are thought to be the remains of the same order of creatures that included monsters such as Qotrophay and Kotqophay who were fought by the gods of the Eleven Cities during their war to win the cosmos from the Hundred Former Gods. Seals still exist in small colonies around some of the coasts of the Sea of Jars but most of the other large sea life, beyond fish, is gone.
Among the creatures mourned for their departure are manatees, who like sea dragons had a place in the religious traditions of the Eleven Cities. Zargyod, the god of fortune, metals and the sea, was said to have turned a shipful of sailors into manatees at an early stage in his divine career (accounts differ as to exactly why or when; the tale of Zargyod and the Sailors is a heterogeneous one) and for many years Sailors on the Sea of Jars observed a long-standing folkloric prohibition on harming or impeding one of these placid animals, which many sailors regarded as beasts of good omen. 
This made their apparently dwindling numbers in the years after the Wesmodian Reformation something of a cause for concern. There is some evidence to suggest that on some ships the active worship of Zargyod continued for some years after the Reformation, possibly as part of an effort to court the presence and goodwill of these placid creatures, or possibly because their disappearance was taken as an indication of Zargyod's divine displeasure. Even after their disappearance they are a noticeable feature of maritime art, appearing in many etchings and drawings by sailors and being mentioned in a number of sea shanties recorded by folklorists. As years passed the animals gradually became regarded less as flesh-and-blood animals and more as anima of the sea, spirits lost to a diminished world. Stories were even told that Reverent pirates were sometimes still visited by them and guided to safe harbours.
This made the gradual reappearance of manatees in some areas of the Sea of Jars in recent years a cause for much celebration among the seagoing public. Always something of a coastal species, they can be found around a number of islands in the sea, with substantial breeding colonies existing not far from the insular cities of Tyros, Dypholyos and Dyqamay. It is not clear why they left or why they have returned now. Their reappearance is not known to have coincided with any documented return to the worship of Zargyod, by sailors or anybody else. The Commercial Guilds, an organisation intimately concerned with sea travel and preserving what there is to be preserved of the institutional memory of the pre-Wesmodian clerisy of Zargyod have not passed any official institutional comment on the reappearance, though several senior figures have been quoted as being pleased by the return. 
More interestingly a number of sailors are said to be reviving extinct traditions of shipboard songs and dances intended to court the presence of the manatees and therefore the good fortune said to accompany them. Scholars who study these matters as part of thaumatological research into the ancient cult of Zargyod view this as a potentially vital research opportunity in that they may be able to determine which if any of these practices actually attract the manatees.