News

Sightings Update: Manatee Season Has Started at Blue Spring!

Screenshot 2024 11 25 115150

Manatee Sighting Update: Pre-Season Visitors

With unseasonably warm weather, the manatees spent some extra time in the St. Johns River before arriving at Blue Spring this year. But even before season really kicked off, a group of nine manatees stopped by in early November, including Mata Hari and her now roughly 6-month-old calf and “3 generations” of released manatees: Buckeye, Matthew, and Squirrel!

We also had a mother manatee come in with a brand-new calf in early November. So far, we have not been able to ID the mom since she has no visible scars.

Manatee adoptee Annie stopped by a few times in late October!

Manatee Sighting Update: The Season Begins!

Then a cold front around the middle of November brought more manatees to the park! On Friday, November 22, a cold front dropped the river temperature to 69 °F (20.6 °C) and got chillier in the days following. The count went from 9 manatees on Thursday to 43 on Friday, 130 on Saturday, followed by a staggering count of over 300 on Sunday, November 24.

Among the manatees, there were quite a few familiar faces that showed up to welcome in the new season.

Webcam Maintenance

Our team has been busy throughout the summer and fall making upgrades to our existing webcams and installing them prior to season. The upgrades included new and more efficient wipers to clean the underwater camera domes, deep cleaning of the underwater housings, as well as new and more efficient setups for our underwater cameras at Silver Spring and Blue Spring. The cameras are now all livestreaming on ManaTV.org for the public to view.

Our team made upgrades to the wipers that clean the underwater camera housings. The wipers are programmed to clean every 15 minutes for a certain number of rotations and stop in the same spot, out of view.

Since Blue Spring is undergoing some construction and the existing swim platform, which we usually mount our underwater camera to, is not available, we had to design a completely new setup. 

Manatee adoptee Annie and manatee Matthew stopped by to inspect our new installation.

More Recent News

Paddy Doyle Tribute

Remembering Paddy Doyle

We received the tragic news that our beloved adoptee Paddy Doyle had passed away at the end of April 2025.

Volunteers With Gina And Hope

Volunteer Mana-team Support for Earth Day

April is the perfect time to come together and make a meaningful impact on manatee conservation and their habitat.

Merlin rests at Blue Spring State Park on February 22, 2025.

Sightings Update: April 2025

Late February and early March saw more cold weather and we counted over 400 manatees on February 22 and over 300 on March 8, which might be a record for March.