MANATEEMERGENCY, CAUGHT ON CAMERA
![Leutemann.manatees[1]](http://hannahholmes.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Leutemann.manatees1.jpg "Leutemann.manatees[1]")
Manatees are so far from rats and roaches. As our planet reels into a chaos of meltdowns and hurricanes, rats and roaches will be fine. Manatees… let’s just hope they sink when they die, because they’d make an awful stink.
I’ve kayaked with the sea cows a few times. It’s eerie. They live in murky coastal waters, and they spend most of their time grazing on seafloor greenery. But every minute or three, a knuckle of algae-colored nose breaks the surface for a breath. If you’re really close you can see an eye, tiny and weak. The rest of the beast is lost in brown water. Then the knuckle sinks, and a couple seconds later the toilet-lid of a tail hurls a round “footprint” of roiling water to the surface. In shallow water you can track a manatee by those tail pools. My friend Bill Belleville, diver, writer, filmmaker, says they like to be scratched if you care to swim with them.
They’re not particularly shy, so you can hang with them. They’re not particularly bright, so they haven’t figured out how to avoid motor boats. They’re definitelyslow, so even if they learned to associate motor noise with danger, they would still get sliced by propellers.
Anyway, the recent cold snap was worrisome because in 68 degree water manatees get a cold-stress syndrome that can kill them. They’re as big as cars, but more delicate than hummingbirds.
The one thing they have learned about life in the modern world is that power plants emit great streams of steaming water. And there they congregate in cold times, basking in the effluent. One of the power plants, at least, has installed a manatee cam.
You can even take the controls and move the camera. (You have to wait in e-line. Other people’s panning and twitching on the cam is alternately funny and tiresome.) Watching manatees at the spa is only slightly less boring than watching logs float around. But you can pan out to the botanical gardens of Tampa Electric, and get your own dose of warmth. Manatees show up best at midday when the sun beats through the gunky water and illuminates them.
