Diving with manatees

[Green Mountain]

I don't know if this is the right section to post this question. I looked down the list of forums and I couldn't find anything that dealt particularly to diving with manatees.

The sites on the web that I saw were kinda of ambigueous.
Do you snokel only for manatees or can you scuba to see them better?

We are going to Florida during the last week of February. Any information would be great.

 

[pipedope]

And scuba elswhere.

Manatees generally don't like bubbles so OC scuba is out.

They are air breathing mammals in shallow water so snorkel is the best answer.

Lots of people running tours in Crystal River.

Take a look at;
http://www.manateecam.com/manateecam.html

 

[herman]

All the places I know about only snorkle and to be honest, I think scuba would be a waste. If they are in the mood, you will get about as good a look as possible just snorkling. Last Feb we took a manatee tour and had 12-15 of them coming over to us. They would swim right up to you and turn on their side wanting to be scratched. This included a mother and small calf. After an hour of scratching them I started to wonder around to see if I could get some other photos, fish or something and actually had one chase ME down so I would scratch him, I could not have gotten any closer than that. A rebreather might be interesting but scuba...no need. We used Birds at Crystral River and were very pleased with them. www.birdsunderwater.com

 

[metaldector]

Either one. On January 1st we were diving at Blue Spring, Orange City, FL and two Manatees came up to us in the boil. We just lay down on the bottom in about 10' of water and both Manatees came down to us (yes, we were in full scuba gear, bubbles and all). One kept nudging my partner with its flipper, much as a dog does to get petted. When we did pet, it actually put its flipper under my arm and pushed it up two and three times. Meanwhile there were about 20 people swimming and kicking all around us and the Manatees. When we got back to the stairs out of the river we found a $1.00 bill stuffed into the mask strap of my buddy. I didn't see it happen, could it have been a tip from a Manatee?

 

[blacknet]

Hello,

for the best manatee encounters you need to snorkel. You can see and interact with them on scuba; however you must be very careful with them. observe the MMPA.

Ed

 

[rjdiver]

Has anybody had any luck with having many manatees left around Crystal River the first week of April? We do our yearly spring break to Florida, and this week we have the March/April split week. I dive with Manatees at the Cincinnati Zoo, to help clean the exhibit, but I would love to swim with some in the wild.

 

[CBulla]

April is pretty much right near the end of the manatees being totally inshore and accessable to snorkel with. There are many places around FL that you can get up close and interact with them big galoots - I did a search on "manatee dive" and "manatee snorkel" on google and was presented with a lot of results.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=manatee+dive

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=manatee+snorkel

My experiences with wild manatees were when I was younger and had a small boat for the back waters. It is quite the experience to be in the water with 15 of these giants swimming around you, even the babies that were mixed in were BIG!

Another cool way to get an up close experience is to take a canoe out and visit, and dont forget your mask and snorkel (and a dive flag, sometimes the law folks are a bit up about it). The nice thing with the canoe is that its quite and you can be out among the Hugh Manatee and the gang without disturbing them or the rest of the habitat and get to see everything enjoying life

 

[MikeJacobs]

Wow... friendly! Makes you wonder how they've avoided extinction all these years, however.

All the places I know about only snorkle and to be honest, I think scuba would be a waste. If they are in the mood, you will get about as good a look as possible just snorkling. Last Feb we took a manatee tour and had 12-15 of them coming over to us. They would swim right up to you and turn on their side wanting to be scratched. This included a mother and small calf. After an hour of scratching them I started to wonder around to see if I could get some other photos, fish or something and actually had one chase ME down so I would scratch him, I could not have gotten any closer than that. A rebreather might be interesting but scuba...no need. We used Birds at Crystral River and were very pleased with them. www.birdsunderwater.com

 

[CBulla]

Wow... friendly! Makes you wonder how they've avoided extinction all these years, however.

The lack of power boats and perpetual redtide my friend...

 

[Genesis]

I got some absolutely AWESOME video footage of several about a week ago at Crystal River / King Spring.

I was on scuba - here's a still.