Blue Spring State Park in Florida is a haven for manatees. Four decades ago, it had just a handful of these gentle animals but, thanks to conservation efforts, these squidgy 'sea cows' now visit in their hundreds.
“Every winter, manatees gather in the spring’s constant 22°C (72°F) waters to escape the cold,” says Andi Cross who shared footage from a visit to the park during her Edges of Earth Expedition.
When Cross and her team went out on the water with Wayne Hartley from the conservation nonprofit Save the Manatee Club, they were amazed by what they saw. There were “over 700 manatees packed into the crystal-clear run, the largest aggregation ever recorded here,” she says.
Hartley has been studying this population of manatees for 40 years. When he first started counting the animals, he used to see 36 manatees, Cross explains. On the day the video was taken, they counted 736 adults and 80 calves.
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Image and video credit: Edges of Earth, Andi Cross
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