Dave gets suited up in the dive shop.
Today is National Manatee Day, so I am reposting this blog I wrote in 2014. We went snorkeling at Three Sisters Springs a manatee sanctuary near Homosassa Florida where we were staying with our friends Jeff and Anna. Jeff arranged the tour for us and suggested we go on the 6am launch with a boat from the Bird’s Underwater Inc.
Getting ready to swim with the manatees in Florida
Few snorkelers or kayakers are in the water at that hour and so the manatees are laid back and friendly. The West Indian manatees wait for the sun to come up before heading out to the Gulf of Mexico to eat seaweed.
It was very cold and we left the dock in darkness and fog with our knowledgeable and capable guide Donna. When we arrived at the springs only the two boats from our sanctuary with about 10 snorkelers each were there. 
And did we see manatees! How I wish I’d had a underwater camera. (The photos of manatee in this post were all taken from on board the boat after we’d been in the water for about ninety minutes.) One of the women snorkeling with us said this was her fourth visit to Three Sisters springs and she had never seen as many manatee on any previous dive.
They swam right under us. I’d think I was swimming over a high rock only to glance down and realize there was a manatee beneath me. Once I looked over and Dave had one manatee nipping at his ankles, another with its nose right up to his face mask, and he was petting a third beside him.
Donna told us if we were very still in the water the manatee would come right up to us and they did. I could pat their thick hide and feel the bristly hair on their bodies, touch their long whiskers, run my fingers along the scars on their skin, brush away the algae sticking to their backs, rub their bellies when they flipped over and see the seaweed in their mouths. Their flat wide tails brushed against my body and they nibbled on my hair.
The manatees have a sort of pre-historic quality about them and that makes sense because they’ve found fossils of manatee in Florida that are 45 million years old. Their nearest relative is the elephant.
We saw little babies and juveniles and huge adult manatees We saw mothers nursing their babies and adults mating. We didn’t realize how cold we were after all that time in the water till we got on board and were just shaking. The manatee were so amazing you didn’t even think about being cold. Once Dave had his wet suit off and his clothes back on he stood out in the sun at the back of the boat to warm up. 
As we left the Three Sisters Spring area about ten new boats had arrived with dozens and dozens of snorkelers. Kayaks were beginning to fill up the cove. The manatee wanting to escape from all the commotion were heading out to sea in large numbers and away from the spring area. I was so glad we’d come early before so many of the manatee left the cove.
Swimming with the manatee was a great experience. I was a little apprehensive and scared about it before hand but the manatee were so gentle and it was such a thrill to get up so close to such intriguing sea creatures.
Other encounters with interesting creatures are described in these posts……….
Hong Kong Frogs That Sound Like Cows Bellowing
The statue remains in place a year later because now the city is divided over who will pay to move it. It will cost $225,000 and so far private donors have only come forward with $26,000. While we were in Lakeland the city’s commissioners voted to use revenues from traffic light cameras to finance the move. 
Now John is leading services in a small church in Fort Mead Florida. It was founded in 1886 by immigrants from England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Canada. The name of the church is Christ Church Episcopal. 
The front of our church in Hong Kong looked like this. The altar table had been rescued from a Christian Centre in Nanjing during the 1930s Civil War in China. 
John does a ‘pastoral pose’ for the camera at the front of his church in Florida. Note the Christ the King emblems on the altar cloths. 
Do you see the octagonal windows on either side of the front door of Christ Temple in Tao Fong Shan? 
The church in Florida features an octogonal window as well. 
We are in Lakeland Florida this week visiting our friends John and Barb. We went for a walk in downtown Lakeland yesterday and came upon an interesting statue. 
The artwork pays tribute to electric linemen and linewomen as first responders and national heroes during times of natural and accidental disasters. Interestingly the design for the statue was the work of three local highschool students who created a prototype for the statue in their art class. 
They said they were inspired by the linemen and linewomen who came to Lakeland as volunteers from all over the United States to restore power after Hurricane Irma hit Florida in September. The three students traveled to Pittsburgh to see their design turned into a stainless steel sculpture. The lineman is surrounded by people on lightbulbs who were helped because of their service. 
A senior citizen
And a young family are two examples. 
My friend Sue and I toured Ernest Hemingway’s house in Key West and saw the more than fifty cats that make their home there, direct descendants of a feline that was a gift to Hemingway from a Florida sea-captain. Apparently during the hurricane a group of dedicated employees stayed behind to protect the Hemingway house and the cats even though authorities ordered them to evacuate and Hemingway’s granddaughter urged them to evacuate as well. 
In Marathon Florida we went for a sail on a boat our friends Ed and Millie had worked on during an earlier visit to the Keys. I have read that at one point Marathon was completely underwater and many marinas in the area look like giant shipwrecks. 
I wonder how our boat the Geni Green and its Captain Jay fared? 
Another thing we did in the Keys was take a drive down Alligator Alley. We saw literally hundreds of alligators. 
News reports say that thousands of these alligators have been displaced from their natural habitat because of the hurricane and some are wandering the streets of Florida’s cities and towns. 
We got home from Arizona the first week of March and Dave swung right into substitute teaching. By the end of last week he’d already spent eight days in the classroom and figured he’d earned enough bonus cash to take advantage of a cheap flight to Orlando he found online. I couldn’t go because I was booked to give tours at the art gallery, had student teachers to visit and a writing deadline to meet. 
What Next? 