Swimming with manatees

A few weeks before we went down to Florida, Michelle found a great Groupon deal for swimming with manatees!  Apparently there are several places where manatees swim to during the winter to stay warm and this is the "busy season" when most of the manatees come each year.  We got a boat all to ourselves and were able to take all of the babies too, as long as we split in half and took turns watching them.  The boat took us to a popular spot where we docked and then we swam into the springs.  Once we got into the springs, the water was crystal clear and there were a TON of manatees.  Those suckers were HUGE... some even the size of small cars.  I had never really snorkeled before, but it was so cool to do it in such clear water because you could really see all of the manatees.  Definitely a cool experience.  The worst part was that it was a really cold, windy day (50 degrees outside) so when we got out of the water (that is always 72 degrees no matter what) we froze to death!!  Totally worth it once for the experience though.

A funny note, those Floridians are nuts about their manatees.  They have all of these rules and the manatee-excursion companies are required by law to show us a video about how to swim with the manatees before going out in the water.  When we were out on the boat, there were several state workers full dressed in their brown wildlife uniforms with boots paddling through on paddleboards right with all of the manatees.  The one by us yelled at me and Michelle for touching a sleeping manatee (he wasn't sleeping though)... but they give our serious fines for violating such small rules!  Crazy.  I'm pretty sure those manatees were more protected than humans!