Bobbi Levin is an excellent writer, and when she writes a
story for the Reporter about a place
to visit as she did recently, she makes you want to go! So today a friend and I
visited the manatees at the Florida Power & Light Discovery Center, which
is right next to the FPL power plant. You should go!
I had seen manatees before
at the springs at Kelly State Park in northern Florida, but the big lumbering
creatures didn't seem that interesting. Too docile for me, I guess, and I was
into swimming-rafting down the river at the time. But at the FPL center it was
different. It's amazing what a little information can do to stir up your
interest in a subject, and there was plenty in the easy-to-read informational
exhibits. Then we latched onto a tour guide who was just super. Twenty people followed her around (NOT a long walk), listened with rapt attention, and pounded her with questions.
I could go on and on, telling you the fascinating stuff we learned, but you need to go for yourself. Get a cup of coffee at the snack shop when you go into the exhibit building and make liberal use of the comfortably molded bench seats to sit down on when your legs feel tired. Relax and enjoy! The center is open Tuesday through Sunday 9 to 4 year-round, but the best viewing, they say, will be only through March. After that and until the fall, the manatees can find the warm waters they need without recourse to the FPL area.
Why do the manatees, who appear so well insulated (like the whale with its blubber) need warm water? Because they're NOT well insulated at all, the tour guide told us. They have very big bones, which are solid, not like ours with a marrow inside. These mammals are VERY temperature sensitive; in fact, hypothermia, from their getting too cold, is the next leading cause of death among them after being injured by motor boats. Typically the adults weigh from 800-1000 lbs. with some reaching 1200 lbs. They need to consume daily about a hundred lbs. of grasses and seaweed, etc., to survive. This vegetable matter is not found in the FPL warm water discharge area, so in the cold weather they go back and forth from the colder waters where there is food to the FPL warm water, where they take a breather and warm up. In the summer a few manatees will travel as far north as Cape Cod. There are different kinds of manatees in different parts of the world, but the ones here in Florida are the largest.
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