Swimming with Gentle Giants By, Jake DeHaan

At the end of this fantastic expedition the South East Costal Team, named the Tickle Sticks, took a short stop in Crystal River, Florida to snorkel with the manatees.
We arrived at the dive shop almost an hour late due to an unfortunate late wake up earlier that morning. Once we arrived time was extremely short, so the team quickly grabbed all of the gear needed and hopped into the van to drive to the boat.
The bout ride was an extremely short one, lasting only but a few minutes. Once the team arrived, we gently slid into the water as not to scare the delicate animals. The first sight of one of the manatees was unnerving. The manatees are around 9 to 12 feet and weigh around 800 to 1200 pounds. About ten minutes later, the group began to get extremely comfortable with them. The animals are very playful and enjoy human/manatees interactions. The manatees loved being rubbed on and at times would roll over, and expose their bellies. Not all to surprisingly, the animals are quite clumsy. They constantly run and bump into the humans in the area, and they never think twice about it. On top of that, the water that morning was horribly cloudy, making it hard to move out of their way.
Once we were all tired we headed back to the boat. Once we arrived we found that the captain had made the group hot cocoa, which was extremely nice since the water had been so cold. We made our way back to shore and in a short time we were back on the road, ready to continue our way on a 10-hour drive to North Carolina.