Hi readers– last Sunday I offered up some tidbits from my recent (I just got back home Monday at 5pm) trip to Florida to swim with and benignly interact with manatees. You can read it here if you missed it.
But, if you want more details, I am also here for you. Herewith my manatee trip narrative…
Origin story of trip: Honestly, I don’t recall either when I first found out that swimming with manatees was a thing or when I became set on this goal. But friends have told me I’ve been talking about this idea for a decade, so I’ll just go with that. I recently got refocused while listening to the podcast Field Trip last summer. I was so charmed and transported by the episode on Everglades National Park that I vowed to one and all (including you, dear readers, here) to make a pilgrimage to natural Florida in the winter of 2025.
At the time, I thought I might combine kayaking in the Everglades with swimming with manatees near Homosassa State Park. However, as time drew nearer, a shorter trip seemed more doable. So, on Travel Tuesday or Cyber Monday (I forget which), I booked myself a cheap airline ticket from Boston to Tampa. I was committed!
Trip planning: I love love love vacation planning. Poring over hotels, rental houses, novelty accommodations (e.g. treehouses,boats, shipping containers) is so interesting, both to see the various ways people like to work and play, and also to get in touch with my own preferences. For this trip, though, since I was moving around, I went with hotel accommodations (all with pools, of course).
I highly recommend the Hollander Hotel in St. Petersburg. Its prices were reasonable, its pool was lovely, its restaurant/bar had a variety of yummy food and its decoration was amusing and eclectic and friendly. Here’s the pool area.
For our on-site manatee headquarters in Crystal River, I picked a local motel (advertised as resort, but don’t be fooled) close to our manatee trip meeting spot. It did the job, despite a sort of grim interior and moldy smell coming from the AC. No matter, we weren’t there to lollygag in the room.
I picked the tour operator– Nature’s Discovery tours— through Trip Advisor. They got great reviews. And I am adding mine to it. Our guide Brian and boat captain Jake were great. More on that in a bit.
A friend from college who lives and works in central Florida recommended the Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park, where we saw manatees who live there and some who are recuperating from injuries. They also have viewing areas for lots of other wildlife who were rescued after being injured or illegally taken from their habitats. It’s totally worth a stop for a half-day outing.
Side note: The Tampa-St. Pete area is pretty interesting on several fronts. There’s lots of excellent art to see in museums and galleries, good restaurants for a variety of cuisines, lovely Gulf beaches with old-timey motels and seafood shacks, and loads of natural areas for viewing flora and fauna. It’s also not hard to get out into the countryside for rail trail cycling, swimming in clear springs, kayaking, etc. It’s not all Disney all the time there.
The manatee swim: we opted for a 7am activity in the hopes that the manatee gathering spots wouldn’t be too crowded with boats and other swimmers. It turned out to be a good idea, even though there were a lot of other boats like ours and wetsuited hopeful manatee fans like us. The morning was beautiful, though.
We had been kitted out with 3-mil wetsuits and snorkeling masks. Once our guide Brian and captain Jake agreed that they spotted a manatee snout breaking the water, we headed in that direction. Then it only remained to get in the water and find that manatee.
Turns out this process is different than I expected. The water in the bay is green and murky, and the manatees like snuffling around on the bottom of the shallows, looking for yummy grasses to eat. So you have to get really close in order to see anything, even an 800-pound manatee. I mean really close. Like 8 inches/20 cm close. For illustration purposes, here are two pictures of swimmers with manatees: the one on the left is from advertising, and the one on the right is from my actual swim (taken with gopro by Brian out guide):
So what’s going on here? The answer is this: when the Gulf water is really cold and the river is cold-ish, manatees go to the clear springs, which are 72 degrees year-round. But the best food isn’t there, so they prefer the murky river shallows for grazing if the temperatures allow. And whither they goest, so goeth our group.
I can’t tell you how wild it is to be floating in the water, head down, and all of a sudden see what looks like an algae-covered submarine cruise just 6 inches beneath you. This actually happened, along with swimming in the slipstream of a manatee’s tail, and hanging out with one, snout down, while it was churning up sand to look for breakfast grasses. These pictures are all murky, but I hope convey how close we were and how awe-inspiring and strange the manatees were.
We also headed to the Three Sisters Spring, hoping to find some not-very-hungry manatees just hanging out. And we did find one– a handsome brown and white speckled guy, along with about 15 other wetsuited folks floating and gawking. Sadly, our guide’s Gopro camera broke as soon as we got in the clear blue spring water. We could see the manatee clear as a bell, which was incredible.
But we only stayed a few minutes, because the boat tour folks limit their time in the spring. All of them work together to make sure everyone can get a glimpse at the manatees who are out and about. I really liked this about Crystal River– the tours seemed to all be run by locals who knew each other and helped each other get the best tours for their customers.
The whole tour lasted about 2.5 hours, which was plenty. We saw a total of three manatees, which isn’t a lot, but was very satisfying. If you want to see a lot more of them in one place, the locals told us that December and January are the best times, as the water in the Gulf is colder, so more manatees are inland.
Here are some photos of Three Sisters Springs (which has a boardwalk for viewing) on January 17, where you see a manatees parking lot in the spring, along with snorkelers outside the protected zone, enjoying the view.
Mid-February is usually a fine time to see them, but there was a warm spell, so the manatees took off for the Gulf. However, we were happy to see the manatees we saw. By March, though, most of them have returned to the ocean. So, if you want to plan a trip with an almost-guarantee of seeing them, go early in the winter.
I am definitely going back, and will go in January. Because if three manatees are good, thirty are better, and three hundred– I don’t know if I’ll be able to contain my delight…
So. Next January. Who’s in?