manatee sighting at Kings Bay Park, Crystal River

On a whim, we drove to Kings Bay Park in downtown Crystal River to see if there were any manatees hanging around. It was a chilly morning. Maybe there would be some stragglers who weren’t on their way out to the gulf yet. Several dive boats full of tourists in wetsuits and snorkel gear were prowling Kings Bay looking for manatees as well. Suddenly a large manatee surfaced at the dock we were standing on, practically under our feet.

“Don’t point at it!” I whispered urgently to Marcus as his arm naturally began to extend.

“What? Why?” he asked.

“I don’t want those boats to see you pointing, or they’ll head over here to have a look and scare him away.”

We kept our arms, and our first wild manatee, to ourselves for just a few moments longer.

a cute little guy wearing the floor of the bay on his back!

manatee with an injured flipper (behind him)

We were eagerly anticipating the manatee program at Homosassa Springs Wildlife Park as they are known primarily for their manatee refuge. The park is the only place in the area you are likely to see manatees year round. I don’t think they have any permanent residents, thank goodness, but given all the boat-strikes and other mishaps, they are usually working continuously with injured manatees to heal them and prepare them to be released back to the wild. We weren’t having much luck finding manatees in the area’s rivers this week because of the warmer-than-usual weather—record-breaking highs five days in a row. So we were excited to see some up close and personal.

When we arrived at the manatee tank, we found it high and dry with three manatees in it—and about a dozen people. No manatee presentation today; instead, the three new manatees the park had recently acquired, victims of last September’s Hurricane Irma, would receive their first medical checkup. Visitors were welcome to watch, however. I wouldn’t call it entertaining, but it certainly was an eye-opener.

As we arrived, there was a bit of a discussion amongst the staff members, volunteers, and vets in the enclosure as to the best way to give the manatees their much-needed shots. These guys were injured and needed antibiotics, among other things. They were not used to being handled by humans, and yet it was necessary for them to be restrained so the vet could inject them.

A nod of heads all around and four staff members and volunteers placed foam mats on top of one of the manatees. There was a bit of foot shuffling and half-hearted attempts to kneel next to the immense animal. Finally one of the staff members, aptly wearing a wetsuit, draped himself over the foam-topped manatee and the rest clumsily followed suit. The manatee struggled under the sudden weight, the restrainers renewed their efforts, slipping awkwardly in the mess at the bottom of the tank, and the vet was able to administer the injections.

Owie! Owie! Owie!

Well, we got our manatee encounter, up close and personal, but nothing like the volunteers and staff members did! I’ll bet it took half a dozen showers to wash away the smell of distressed manatee!

It started with a lunch date in Lake Placid, Florida. A friend of Marcus’s from New Hampshire had bought a home in Bradenton, on the west coast of the state, and wondered if we would like to meet somewhere in between there and Stuart for lunch. Sure! What’s a two-hour drive amongst friends?

But then we started thinking: If we’re going to drive halfway across the state, why not drive the whole distance and make a mini-vacation of it? I scanned my brain: What have I had a hankering to see on the west coast? It took all of a few seconds to decide—manatees!

Winter is manatee season in Florida. When the water temps in the ocean and gulf are chilly, the manatees come into the rivers and lagoons where it’s warmer. Power plants, with their warm wastewater effluence, are a draw, but the main focal points in the state are the underwater springs, typically a cozy year-round 72°—a veritable hot tub for a manatee in winter.

No less than fifty underwater springs feed Kings Bay in Crystal River, on Florida’s gulf coast, making it the second largest first-magnitude spring system in the state, according to Wikipedia, and a popular winter home to hundreds of manatees. (Wakulla Springs is the largest first-magnitude system.) I’ve always wanted to visit to see a multitude of manatees in their natural winter habitat, and this, being February and a chillier-than-average winter, seemed like the ideal time.

Of course, we made these plans in January, when the weather was much cooler. It’s warmer now, but the temperatures are still dropping into the 60s overnight. We have seen a few in the early morning. Stay tuned for more wildlife adventures….