Baby manatee rescued from St. Pete Waters gets a second chance

Do you ever need to see something real? So, have you ever wanted a round potato to whisk you away from the Doomy Digital Feedback Loop to remind you of the wonders of nature and humanity’s ability to help?

So, OK, this is what happened. My colleagues and I were sitting at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg on Wednesday. There, we are crouched down after a crane fell into our newsroom. We fell around the table and discussed current events. This is not something I would recommend! Do not discuss current events!

The conversation was simultaneously limp and painful, like an abused RAM news cycle. As we became increasingly frustrated and tired, reporter Max Chesnes pinged our cell phones. The manatee had been rescued at Bayboro Harbor near the University of South Florida’s St. Petersburg campus.

It was… across the street.

About 10 journalists glazed over the thick layer of the truck, as if chasing pleasure itself. We joined a gathering of students, police officers, and passersby.

Someone had found a baby, both literal and affectionate – swimming with nothing but lesions on his nose from the cold. There was a chest deep in frigid water that workers from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and ZooTampa in Lowry Park tried to save.

They cornered the manatee and put him on a stretcher, his snoot ramming into his beloved fan. Everyone on the sea wall clapped and strengthened with life! The pro hit Wydal’s calf with a truck, where he wrapped him in a blanket and took him to ZooTampa for rehabilitation. I’m so sorry to sound like a toddler, but we’re talking about baby manatees here.

Andy Garrett, Fish and Wildlife’s manatee rescue coordinator, was kind enough to chat with me after I chased him across the harbor. This is a busy season for manatee rescues as they need warm water to survive. His team saved four from Escambia to Manatee County and built a range of more.

“On days like today, he should be across the bay at the power plant,” Garrett said. “This is not a good place for it to be.”

Serotonin’s next ploy was to ask the zoo if he could come and play like Dennis the Menace. Greenlight, I headed to the zoo’s David A. Straz Jr. Manatee Critical Care Center on Thursday.

The center is expanding to include more tanks, essentially hospital beds. Manatees arrive starved due to cold tolerance, propeller injuries, and habitat loss. There are 23 recovered manatees at the zoo. Until the recent release, that number was 28 years old, the highest ever.

Manatees are classified as threatened, although many environmentalists would like them to be returned to their former status as an endangered species. Fish and Wildlife reported 565 manatee deaths in 2024. Three years ago, the state reached a grim record of 1,100 deaths.

The zoo’s newest resident was shy and tired in his tank. The staff named him Enzo after a winter storm gripped the south.

Enzo is less than a year old and weighs 272 pounds, said Molly Lippincott, the zoo’s senior curator of Florida and marine life. If that sounds huge, consider that your release target weight is 600 pounds. They don’t even escape from their mother until about 400.

Enzo’s temperature was an alarmingly low 76, telling rescuers he had probably been there for a while. Manatees, like humans, must be at about 98 degrees. He was swollen, scarred, and had white spots from the cold, and his body was pushed inward to protect his internal organs.

Lippincott saw Stuff’s bottle feeding a nearby baby named Biscayne and watched him give medicine to a 1,000-pound Whopper named Arthur. She said she hates it when people jokingly ask her what the purpose of a manatee is. They are part of a complex ecosystem. They are environmental pioneers. And given all the challenges they face, manatees are icons of grit.

“They hide things really well, don’t they?” she said. “Adult animals have 17-foot intestines. And their lungs are all over their bodies, so they’re really exciting. They’re cute, they’re sweet.”

“Have you never met an enemy?” I said.

“I have never met an enemy,” she said. “What they can handle is like no other species on Earth.”

I did this work and asked how it felt. After a seamless recitation of manatee facts, she paused to find the words.

It’s bittersweet, it’s a thing. Because you don’t want these manatees here. But like the adorable algae-covered off-the-track Enzo, they’re so easy to love.

The other side of love? That’s heartbreak.

“Last year we had an incident where her face was severed by a propeller and was immediately cut off. She was still breathing and wasn’t using her nare, but she was breathing through her face. , I was just hanging there, trying everything I could to try…”

An otherwise healthy and wonderful animal opened. I lost it.

“So those are things.”

Enzo should have great prospects if he learns the ropes. Experts will know more about the test results. They’ll see him start flogging lettuce leaves floating above the tank as he seeks the soothing comfort of the creatures around him working toward next year’s release. After all, he is a social animal who was never meant to toil alone in a cold harbor.

He’s already on his way. He hovered out of sight, dangling below one of his new roommates, an underweight manatee named Thin Mint. They float together, real, breathing, being.

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