“Manatees
are gentle and slow-moving animals living in the water. Most of their
time is spent eating, resting, and travelling. Manatee are mostly
herbivorous, however small fish and invertebrates can sometimes be
ingested along with a manatee's normal vegetation diet.”
We travelled to Naples this past
weekend to visit friends from Cardinal, Ontario that live on their
catamaran “Daruma”. Their marina, Port of the Islands, is a nice
facility with alligators, manatees and tons of fish around.
(Alligators are not where people are!) This marina is in the
Everglades. We arrived Friday afternoon and saw the Manatee Research
and Rescue Boat go out to collect an injured young manatee. We were
told they would be about two hours before they get back. I promptly
went to get my camera and watched the waterway for their return. Most
manatee are injured from a boat going by and their motor blades
hitting a portion of their body. Even slow moving boats are at risk
of doing this because manatee are slow moving mammals.
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| Injuries on his back |
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| Many a manpower and woman-power |
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| A truck takes the manatee to a facility that will mend him and take it back to where they found him |
We also travelled to Fort Myers to see
the World Championship of Sand Sculpting, it was awesome, but that is
another post for another day.
We are back to work today, Sam's Club,
provisioning and finalizing everything before home bound soon.
"Manatee can get as big at 13ft and 1,300 lbs, they live in 2-3 meters of water and can live up to 60 years...." wow
1 comment:
When we were in a marina in Fla, once, a manatee over 15 feet long was rubbing up against our boat. He was longer than our 15 foot beam, which is how I know his approximate length. Huge, docile creatures. Did you know that they were originally imported to feed work crews who were building the canals back in the day. They are like sea cows, not indigenous originally and now a big headache in boating areas.
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