Swimming with Manatees in Florida

[lowsingle]

So I was on vacation last week in Bradenton and I went snorkeling with manatees on the Crystal river and thought I would share some pictures (I wasn't sure which forum to post this in). Definitely a great time and I recommend this to anyone if they get a chance. First picture is my wife and I petting a juvenile:

 

 

The second picture is that same manatee going up to the boat to be pet by my parents:

 

 

The last picture is one of the manatee rolling over to get pet on the belly (Kind of like a dog):

 

 

In this pic you can see the line that separates the restricted areas from the open snorkeling area. This allows the manatees to interact with people only when they want to. In 15 years of diving I have never seen a wild animal so interested in humans. Manatees have no wild predators so they are extremely docile and quite gentle. This has to rank with one of my best wildlife experiences of all time.

 

cheers,

Darren

[zygote2k]

What do they taste like?

[epleeds]

i did that a few years back and did some scuba in the crystal river. another thing that is a good experience is diving in the bahamas during the shark feedings, that was fun.

[flowerseller]

What do they taste like?

 

Wonder how long till someone says chicken

 

 

Pretty neat to see how much they enjot the interaction.

Did you give them any treats or are they just enjoying the contact.

[L8 2 RISE]

When I was down in the Keys two years ago, I "met" a few. A little background about it because it was a pretty amusing srory: We have some friends down there who have a boat, so we went out snorkling on the reef, then came back to a little dock in a sort of inland lagoonish place. Our had to run off to pick up his son, and my parents went to the car to put my sisters in it so my brother and I were left to hose the boat down and unload it. Well we finished pretty fast, had some chips left over, and there were some big fish in the water so we crumbled up chips and threw them in, but then the seagulls started coming down and stealing the chips from the fish. We got the hose back out and started spraying at the seagulls to keep them away, I turned around to get another handfull of chips, turned around and there was a massive 12-13 foot long grey blob in the water. Scared me out of my mind, then I realized it was a manatee. There ended up being four in total and we ended up spending 40 minutes with them (my parents and our friends came back as soon as they heard as well). Turns out that manatees are actually fresh water and have to go back to fresh water once every two weeks or so to drink, so they were attracted to the hose and kept on drinking. We never got in the water with them because the area where we were was full of staph and there were literally millions of upside down jellies in the water, we originally thought they were just plants until I poked one... Here's some pics:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[lowsingle]

No treats, they just chose to hang out with us.

[lowsingle]

Did you do the shark dive with Stuart Cove? I did some diving with them in the bahamas a few years back and saw that they had a shark feeding dive, but I passed to scuba on a reef wall instead.

 

cheers,

Darren

 

i did that a few years back and did some scuba in the crystal river. another thing that is a good experience is diving in the bahamas during the shark feedings, that was fun.

[lowsingle]

Sweet pics!