2003-2004 Season Summary for Manatees at Blue Spring State Park  Orange City, FL Submitted by Ranger Wayne Hartley The manatee season began on 29 November and ended on 14 March. A record 178 individual manatees were seen. A record 142 stayed the winter and we had a record morning roll call in January of 128! Thirty-six animals shared forty boat strikes during the season. This is worse than the dozen or so strikes last season but better than the seventy or eighty we had a couple of seasons. Thirty-four of the hits were minor and six were significant. There are some items that may be of general interest. Georgia is pregnant. Comet is doing well. Sea World just wants to make sure the lung is not involved. Last season I started to name a manatee Brad when I realized I didn’t know its sex. I changed the name to Bread to be neutral and when it came in this season it had distended nipples and eventually adopted BS362, an injured orphan that had shown up for the season. Bread must have lost a calf during the summer. 362 was the smallest calf in the Run. Destiny was released by Sea World during the summer and died soon after. Cause of death could not be determined due to decomposition. Her calf Doom is still coming in and going up the run but not bothering people. Africa and Bertha, along with many others I expected, did not show. I hope to see most of them next season. Jim is still growing! Calista nursed her calf for another year. Best of all, Xoshi was seen in Lake George with a calf. Where does she spend the winter? Roll Call was made difficult this season by the mild weather. When the river gets cold the heavy water of the river comes in under the warmer lighter spring water and forces the manatees to spread out up the run. This year they tended to stay in a clot of as many as eighty or more in the shallows just inside the run. I took roll by circling them as I was afraid of getting dunked it I went directly over them. I wasn’t helped by the youngsters playing in a clay bank just above that continually caused clouds of cloudy water to obscure the manatees I was trying to identify. With the season over the nights remained cool and the River warmed very slowly. As a result manatees still came in from time to time. On 20 March Jax came in with a big new boat strike. Since I saw him from the bank I didn’t know it was him until 26 March when I got out in the canoe. He had another smaller strike on his right side but was behaving normally. Amanda was with him and had a bad injury to the left side of her pedunkle but was also behaving normally. She too had been seen from the bank earlier. Around noon on 5 April Ann Spellman of the Florida Marine Research Institute, Florida Wildlife Commission, called me to Sanford to identify a manatee in trouble. It was Jax. He was captured and taken to Sea World but his lung collapsed and he had to be euthanized on 22 April. During his treatment at Sea World a new waterproof bandaging technique was developed that may help save other animals in the future. WAYNE C. HARTLEY PARK RANGER BLUE SPRING STATE PARK Copyright 2004 Journey North. All Rights Reserved. Please send all questions, comments, and suggestions to our feedback form