News

By Stephanie Cohen, Public Relations Specialist & Cora Berchem, Director of Multimedia and Manatee Research Associate

We’re excited to announce that Ester, a favorite manatee with a rich history, has officially joined Save the Manatee Club’s Adopt-A-Manatee® program. Ester’s story is intertwined with our long history at Blue Spring State Park, and her addition allows us to connect even more people with this incredible species and our shared mission to protect them and their habitat for today and future generations. Ester comes from one of the longest-recorded manatee lineages at Blue Spring. Her grandmother, Emma, was one of the original manatees identified at the park and was even featured in Jacques Cousteau’s documentary The Forgotten Mermaids. Ester was first identified in 1990 when she was observed nursing with her mother, Elaine, who has been part of our adoption program for many years. Ester has since grown to be a mother of 12 calves, including Esso, who still winters at Blue Spring, and Echo, who made Ester a great-grandmother in 2019. Ester’s most recent calf was born this summer, and the pair came back to Blue Spring together in November 2024.

Ester’s mother, Elaine, stopped visiting Blue Spring in 2013, and her whereabouts are unknown, but Ester likes to hang out in the spring run and is oftentimes found resting with other large females on the northern bank of the run where it is the sunniest. Ester even made her own debut on national television this past November when she was featured on one of the most recent episodes of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom!

“We are excited to share her story with more people through our adoption program,” says Cora Berchem, Director of Multimedia and Manatee Research Associate at Save the Manatee Club.

To become a Save the Manatee Club adoptee and be included in the program, a manatee first needs to have some sort of identifying mark(s)—which in most cases are scars from collisions with watercraft—so researchers can recognize the manatee. Second, the manatee must have a sighting history and be known to return to a monitored warm-water habitat each winter so that researchers can identify them and provide updates for adoptive parents. This is why many of our adoptees are older manatees—because they are reliably seen at the same warm-water refuges for several years in a row. We usually do not include calves in the program as they are difficult to identify, and we don’t know yet whether they will return to the same warm-water site. Last, the manatee should have some sort of “interesting” history that we can share with the adoptive parents. For example, some of our adoptees, like Ester, belong to a long genealogy at Blue Spring that goes all the way back to the 1970s. Others were rescued as orphaned calves and released at Blue Spring.

Blue Spring is a natural winter refuge for manatees, offering a toasty and consistent 72°F, even when the temperature in nearby lakes and rivers plummets. The spring has been a sanctuary for manatees and other wildlife for decades, attracting hundreds of manatees to come rest in the protected water, year after year.