Playing With A Wild Manatee

Since moving to the Florida Keys, and especially since becoming a boater on the Florida Bay, I have had the chance to see an abundance of wildlife including birds, dolphins, sharks and manatees. Scott and I once followed the progress of a pair of osprey and their young…from the building of the nest to the one surviving youngling attempting to take his first flight. We once witnessed a wild dolphin show complete with jumps and twists like something you would see at Sea World. But my most memorable wildlife encounter to date was the time a manatee stopped by to play with us.

We were onboard Idle Hours, anchored in Sunspotz Cove. It had been a great tie-up party earlier in the day. Three other boats had joined us and we had been swimming and playing all day. It was late afternoon and everyone else had left. Scott and I decided to stay and swim just a little longer and catch the sunset. It was a beautiful evening. I was getting us each a drink and preparing to join Scott in the water when I noticed what appeared to be a very large gray rock immediately underneath him. Just as I was saying to him, “Hey Scott, I don’t remember that big rock…” a manatee surfaced and I shouted, “There is a manatee right behind you!”

At this point in the story, I probably should have gotten the camera. Instead, I sat down the drinks, grabbed my noodle chair and quietly climbed down the ladder into the water. Meanwhile, after allowing Scott to scratch it’s back, the manatee had gone back under the water but had not swum off. As I floated toward Scott, suddenly I was face to face with the manatee and as he blew out his surfacing breath, I could smell his bad breath! Of course, I began scratching and petting him. Scott did the same. We just floated there in our noodle chairs, hugging and rubbing on this manatee. At one point he flipped over and presented his belly for us to scratch and rub. He stayed there with us for about ten minutes, and then he swam several circles around us before lazily swimming off. He didn’t want food or water he just wanted to play! It was magical!