A few days ago, we visited the Manatee Center here in Ft Pierce. Apparently, this is a common area to find large herds of these "sea cows" as they travel to find warmer water in the winter months.
It was a small exhibit, but well done. We learned that they are mammals, who must come to the water's surface every few minutes for air, but as long as every 20 minutes if sleeping. They sleep on their backs, only about 1 foot from the surface, and are slow moving animals. This makes them very vulnerable to injury with outboard engines (like ours on our dinghy). Because of their slow reflexes, they can't respond to the noise quickly enough. Virtually all adult manatees have scars from outboard motor injuries, and biologists use these scar patterns to identify individual manatees.
Part of the exhibit included a movie, which demonstrated the common sounds that manatees make. Brian and I were amazed to remember some of the exact same clicking sounds from the night before while on our boat! It was night time, and we were down below. We heard these funny noises, but the sounds disappeared when we climbed up above into the cockpit, so we knew they were underwater. The animals typically weigh around 1,000 pounds! They are naturally curious, so they were probably coming over to check out our boat.
That's so neat that you heard a manatee! Didn't you like those in high school, or was that elephants? Funny I can't remember which since one lives in the water and one lives in Africa. Anyways, love the picture of the girls, especially Madelyn admiring the manatee.
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