Swimming with Manatees

I have a deep and unwavering love for manatees. Many people don’t even know what manatees are, and those who do usually find them to be unattractive. I can’t explain why I love them, but I always have. I was fascinated by their size, struck by the fact that they are completely harmless yet their population is declining due to humans, and totally enamored with their adorable faces. When I was a kid, a family friend even “adopted” one for me as a birthday gift one year. I was ecstatic. I actually wanted to pay it forward and gift an adopted manatee to my niece last Christmas, but she’s skeptical of them so I went with a humpback whale instead.

When I was in third grade, in 1999, we had to complete a mandatory science fair project. We were advised that the parameters were pretty wide, but students who did their projects on animals typically lost to those who did experiments when it came time for judging at the big event. I loved to win, but I was not deterred. I did my project on manatees. I’m sure my parents quickly bored of my facts and sea cows and my growing fear that they would actually become extinct in my lifetime. Needless to say, I didn’t win the science fair. But I was given the best prize of all: my parents decided that on our next trip to Florida to visit our cousins, we would go swimming with manatees.

Flash forward to the boat ride through Three Sisters Springs alongside my parents and younger brother, Conor. They anchor the boat and ask who wants to get in the water first. I jump up. I follow their directions, lowering my body slowly into the water, not kicking my feet, letting my wetsuit keep me afloat at the surface. I look down, and through my mask I immediately see a manatee swimming directly below me. I forget the directions and just start kicking frantically. As you now know, I had been looking at pictures and videos of this gentle giants for years, but that does not prepare you for the surprise of a 10-foot long, 1,500 pound manatee just three feet beneath you. Once I gathered myself though, I could have stayed in that water for days.

Flash forward again, this time to 2018. I’m back in Florida with my parents, Conor, his girlfriend Brianna, and Evan. After 10 years together Evan is very familiar with my love for manatees, so he had planned to gift another manatee encounter to me for Christmas. My parents stepped in and decided to gift it to the four of us “kids” so we could all go together. Our voyage into the river happened to be on the coldest day the gulf side of Florida had all winter. I despise getting up early, so a 5:00am wake up call for a boat trip on a 35 degree day was certainly not my idea of a good time. However, the thought of my enormous sea cows waiting for me made me giddy.

We had a chilly ride out to a protected area that morning (the tours often take you to the outskirts of these areas where manatees tend to gather, but they also have the freedom to stay entirely away from humans if they prefer). When it was time to dip into the water, we were relieved that it was actually a bit warmer than the air. We spent two hours in the water that day and there were only a handful of minutes when a manatee wasn’t within sight. Because manatee tails often cause sand and dirt to float up into the water and cloud the visibility, we sometimes wouldn’t see them until they popped up in front of our faces, close enough to touch. As a visitor in their natural habitat, we are only allowed to reach out with one open hand to touch their backs. But the manatees don’t have to follow any rules, and on this trip they were particularly handsy. Running my hand over the backs of these remarkable mammals, I could feel their rough skin, similar to an elephant’s. I could trace every scar from the motors of boats driven by humans disobeying “no wake” signs. I could feel patches of algae growing on the older manatees, who were usually less curious about the people in wetsuits floating above them. The absolute highlight, and a favorite moment of my entire year, was when a very playful manatee grabbed ahold of me with both arms, firmly on my waist, and tickled my feet with his whiskers. I never wanted to leave him.