Manatees galore!

Thursday 1 February
We had an amazing day for wildlife today. Our principal destination, about 1 1/2 hours northwest of us, was Blue Spring State Park, where the 72 degree turquoise waters of Blue Spring feeding the Wekiwa River attract Manatees in the winter months to the warm waters. It is a testament to the success of conservation efforts. In 1970, two years before Blue Spring State Park was established, researchers tracked 14 manatees in the spring run. By 2005, after years of park improvements and manatee protection efforts, wintering manatees numbers exceeded 200, and by 2023 that number had reached a record 729. One day earlier this week, after a cold spell, they counted 1,000! Today the number was approaching 600. I had read that the park can get so popular (with humans) that they have to close it, so we had got a fairly early start and arrived soon after 10 am, to find a short line, but moving - you have to pay at the gate. By the time we left around 2pm the line was much longer. There is a path/boardwalk from the spring itself, along the run, down to where it joins the St. John’s River. The water is so clear, and besides the manatees, you can see many fish. It was just an amazing sight - I could have stood and watched for hours. In the center right hand shot, you can see a manatee wearing a tracking device. It’s fastened around the top of its tail, and the tracker is on a small floating buoy at the end of a rope - carefully designed so it can break off if it gets caught in underwater obstacles. They use this particularly if manatees have been rehabilitated due to being orphaned or injured, so they can make sure they’re doing OK. Our local Cincinnati Zoo takes part in the rehabilitation program, having three manatees at a time, usually orphaned ones, which they nurse back to health and allow to grow, before returning them to Florida to be released. In the Spring through Fall months, when the manatees aren’t there, you can kayak, snorkel and dive in the waters of the Spring,
Having finally had our fill of manatees, we headed to the National Seashore again, but this time approaching from the north. Whilst the barrier island is continuous, the road doesn’t go all the way through. One thing I had been hoping to see the previous days we had visited the National seashore was an armadillo, but we didn’t see a single one. Today, however, as we drove in and later out of the seashore, we had not just one, but ten sightings! (See extras) once we got to the beach, however, we discovered it was really quite cool, and windy, with the wind coming off the sea, so there was no way to shelter from it, so there was no sitting on the beach today, just a walk. On our way back, we stopped and did a short trail, leading to a small rise, created by the Indians, affording views to the ocean on one side, and the lagoon on the other.
It was our last night here in Cocoa Beach, so we went out for dinner at a very good fish restaurant.
Step count: 11,384