Adopt-A-Manatee®

Robin has not been sighted since 2016. We hope no news is good news, and we will continue to look out for him, but his absence means that there may not be any updates in our newsletters or webcam blogs.

Robin was born to a manatee named Wonder Woman on April 15, 1980. He stayed with his mother for two years, and he even continued to spend a great deal of time in her company after he was weaned. At the time of his birth, Wonder Woman was being monitored by a radio-tracking program. That is why he is one of the few manatees born in the wild with a known birth date. Like his mother, Robin wore a tag for a while, and he enjoyed sleeping in the deep water in the middle of the river, which left his tag submerged. The only time his tag could be detected was when he surfaced for air, which made him more challenging for researchers to locate. Without the tag, Robin is identifiable due to a noticeable scar on his back, which is a deep gash he received from a boat hit when he was only three years old. Like most manatees in the wild, Robin bears a number of scars all over his body from boat strikes. Due to the many scars on his tail, he has even been given the nickname “Rag Tail.” Though Robin’s wounds healed, these scars will always remain.

Despite his past injuries, he remained a playful and active manatee, and he visited the spring regularly to enjoy the warm water during the cold months. He paces, swimming up and down, watching the activities, and seldom sleeping while in the spring run. Manatee season is officially November through March, but Robin was often “fashionably late” and arrived in December some years. He liked to travel, rest, and play with other manatees while at the park—as a rule, manatees are semi-social, somewhat solitary animals, but he seems more social than semi-social. However, he is not a follower. One day, a group of manatees in the spring were startled by a loud noise, and they all headed downstream quickly toward the river. In the middle of them, undaunted, was Robin—working his way back upstream!