National Geographic, 4/2013-Mel White
Photograph by Paul Nicklen
The welcome sign on the outskirts of Crystal River isn’t the kind you see every day: “Manatee Information: Tune to 1610 AM,” it reads. Then, too, not many towns have a red-white-and-blue statue of an endangered marine mammal in front of City Hall.
Stop to ask where you can see these aquatic celebrities, and you learn that a couple dozen local dive shops offer snorkeling tours in Kings Bay. Or you can rent a kayak and paddle to one of the warm springs where manatees hang out in winter. Or if you want to watch from dry land, you can head over to the canal west of Three Sisters Springs.
At the canal it takes only a few minutes before the first manatees cruise below, pale ghosts in the jade green canal. They pass alone, or with a single calf, or occasionally in groups of three or four. There’s a constant flow of people coming and going too.
“It’s like a big rusty oilcan floating in the water,” a man says.
“Why, they don’t look like nothin’ at all!” a woman exclaims in a Dixie drawl, and she has a point. The blobby shapes passing under the bridge will never win any wildlife beauty contests. The only color they show is the pink of propeller scars, parallel gashes like sidewinder rattlesnake tracks on their gray backs.
For more photos and information on this story please see National Geographic.
