Here’s a feel-good story for the start of summer. Two deputies in Florida held a manatee’s head up out of the water for more than two hours, keeping it from drowning, before help arrived and ultimately set it free back in the water.
The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office gave this account of the manatee rescue:
Deputy Jill Constant got a call recently, when the red tide levels were high, from a woman saying that a manatee was in distress in the Intracoastal Waterway. The animal was trying to beach itself on some rocks on Shell Key Preserve, about 11 miles below St. Petersburg.
Constant and another deputy from the Marine and Environmental Lands Unit arrived quickly. “This manatee is going to die right in front of us, and I’m not letting that happen,” she said. “We docked the boat. I took off my equipment and got in. We stayed in the water for two hours, holding its head up, until it could be rescued.”
Manatees are mammals who must come to the surface to breath.
The two deputies held the manatee until biologists from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission arrived and took over. They managed to get the manatee back into the water safely, and it swam away.
The sheriff’s office said that about 6,000 to 7,000 manatees live in Florida. In just 2022 alone, about 1,000 died from being hit by boats, suffering from red tide or starving as a result of habitat destruction. Manatees are gentle, friendly animals who often approach boats or swimmers. But it is against the law to touch them. Read more:
