MANATEE ISLAND: Sea cow thrills boaters on Crab Island (with PHOTOS)

Buster Knellinger, a visitor from Ridgeland, Miss., experienced a close encounter of the manatee kind at Crab Island last week. Here is his report:

“It was AWESOME seeing the Manatee that close. We have seen them in the surf off Destin a few times in the past years, but never that close. We were at high tide so the water could not have been more clear. It was almost like he was in a swimming pool. We were anchored about 150 yards north off the Destin bridge at Crab Island. We were really on the outside of the normal group of anchored boats in about 4-feet of water. He approached us from under the bridge, came along the starboard side of the boat, went about 50 yards off the stern, to the bow of another boat, where a lady on the boat yelled to us ‘It’s a Manatee!’ He then turned around and headed right back to us so we scrambled for cameras and found them just in time to take the pics. 

“The last we saw of him, he was heading back out under the bridge and appeared to be going back to open water ... There was one guy on a jet ski that was following him at a safe distance, so there really wasn’t much of a crowd reaction, only amazement by the six or seven of us. He didn't stick around for more than two to three minutes total. He just came and went.”

Amanda Wilkerson, at the Emerald Coast Wildlife Refuge, said area manatee sightings are becoming more common in the last five years.

“Once it warms up they come up here. There were six of them at one time last year at Crab Island,” she said. “They have started to progressively come up here more and more.”

Martine DeWit, an associate research scientist with the marine mammal division of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, confirmed the trend and said last year a Florida manatee traveled all the way to Dennis, Mass. He got stuck there and federal agencies staged a rescue but he died on his way back to Florida.

A similar rescue was staged in Destin after an apparently struggling sea cow was sighted near Sandpiper Cove in mid-March, but the manatee was never found.

DeWit said there are various reasons for the uptick in sightings — but that climate change is likely not one of them.

“They are looking for areas less crowded, where more sea grass is available with less boats on the water,” she said, adding that often the males are the ones to wander more northerly.