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Sightings Update: Manatee Season Has Started at Blue Spring!

December 4, 2024 | ,
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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.

Moo Shoo was the first adoptee to visit after the season officially started! Here she is on November 23, 2024.
The next day, Howie, Philip, and Phyllis all joined Moo Shoo at the park. Phyllis brought in a new calf, and this sweet moment between the two was caught on camera.
Howie was difficult to find in the murky water, but our researchers managed to spot him. Pictured here, he is the rightmost manatee.
Rocket made his first visit on Monday, November 25. Pictured here, he was spotted taking a snooze after arrival.
A day later, Aqua made her first visit of the season and brought a new calf in with her! Here she is on November 26, 2024.
Manatees Irma and Amelia were released together at Blue Spring several years ago. Although they have gone separate ways, they still seem to meet up in the winter time, which is so unusual. We believe Amelia might be pregnant! Here they are resting side by side (Amelia is the one on the right, Irma on the left).
The river warmed up for a few days, which slowed the manatee arrival. Despite the warmer temperatures, Lily made her first visit on November 30.
A few more adoptees arrived on December 1! Gator was one of them; he is pictured here resting.
Though she stayed in murky water, we did get confirmation that Una made her first visit on December 1.
Whiskers was also among the December 1 group, and we managed to take this photo of him resting.
December 3 brought in another new group of arrivals, including Deep Dent!
Doc was also among the adoptees spotted on December 3.

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.
We had our underwater housing for the Homosassa camera professionally cleaned to provide better views of the manatees.
We re-installed our 180-degree view camera at Silver Spring and designed a new extension to make it easier to pull the camera in and out for cleaning and maintenance.

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.

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