It's Manatee Season in Blue Spring

Hundreds of manatees head to warmth of Blue Spring

By Dinah Voyles Pulver
for West Volusia News Journal Online
on January 7, 2010

ORANGE CITY -- The arrival of cold weather each year means a reunion with old acquaintances and a welcome to new ones for Wayne Hartley as he greets manatees arriving at Blue Spring to seek refuge from the chilly waters of the St. Johns River.

This week Hartley, a ranger at Blue Spring State Park, has much to celebrate.

A record 305 of the endangered marine mammals have appeared in the park this season, Hartley said. That includes a single-day record of 245 manatees a week ago. The total number is more than 2 1/2 times than 10 years ago, when Hartley reported a season high of 112.

On Wednesday morning, the water temperature in the St. Johns River was 50 degrees, Hartley said, much colder than the relatively balmy 72- or 73-degree ground water flowing from the spring.

Manatees of all sizes clustered together along the banks of the spring run, while the two dozen swimming in the spring boil were the most active, rolling over and over.

"It must be like a spa," observed Patsy Weaver, who visits the spring each winter with her husband to see the manatees. The Lynchburg, Va., residents spend the winter in DeLand and said they love to take visitors to the spring. They said they'd never seen as many manatees as they saw Wednesday.

"They look like they're enjoying the warmth of that spring," Dwight Weaver said.

The Weavers were among dozens of visitors peering over the water from boardwalks, cooing in delight each time a manatee's whiskered nose broke the water's surface.

At the end of the run, where it flows into the St. Johns, Hartley sat in a canoe about 10 a.m., debating whether to attempt a count in the windy, freezing conditions.

The count ritual is nearly as old as the park itself. The yearly counts began during the winter of 1974-75, when 24 manatees visited the run. For decades, the task has fallen to Hartley, who documents the manatees in photos and diagrams, identifying them by propeller scars and other body features.

One recent visitor was a manatee named Merlin, Hartley said, one of 11 manatees in the spring run when the late Jacques Cousteau filmed a documentary called "The Forgotten Mermaids" in 1971.

Another one of the original 11, Brutus, has been seen in Silver Glen Springs, Hartley said. Silver Glen is on the west side of Lake George, farther north on the St. Johns River.

An observer monitoring the manatees in Silver Glen Springs, Salt Spring and DeLeon Springs has taken photos of both the old manatees this winter.

There was a time when manatees only made pit stops at Silver Glen, Hartley said, "but now they're starting to hang out there."

He said that group includes young manatees that haven't been seen at Blue Spring,

On Monday night, a marine mammal rescue crew released a manatee in Blue Spring that had been picked up in Jacksonville earlier in the day.

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