After more than a month away, the manatee, or at least A manatee, is back. So Grant and I went to admire it yesterday, drifting down from C dock to B dock...

The manatee moves slowly, as my friend DJ might (might!!!) say, because its Kung Fu is strong. Either that, or it's pretty close to sessile, most of the time.

I used to think they looked like semi-submerged tires of some kind...

But perhaps this is one of their subterfuge skills...

This one is drifting with the current, first beside the Lady Nancy:


Zoomed in. Yes, that really is some kind of gold-colored aquatic weed growing along its flanks, just as it grows on the bottoms of the boats that stay still in the marina for long periods. You can also see where some motorboat propeller cut it along the back. The cut has healed but exposed the white fat layer beneath:


Then between boats, where it actually took a breath after a few minutes and moved its tail a few times!


And went under the Lady Nancy and out of our ken. The marina is dredged to 16 feet or so and the manatee can stay down quite a while.