MANATEES

JUMP TO EXTRA GOOD

Hello and welcome to the kick-off post of Here's One Good Thing 😀!

To begin our tour of good things in the world, it seems only right that we start with … manatees.  In that rare realm of the purely good, manatees humbly glide with comfort and ease.

I'd like to introduce you to this friendly floater spotted earlier this year in a quiet Florida canal (low quality pics/high-quality experience):  

Here is a face (and body) with nearly mystical powers: with one look, your endorphins flow and protective instincts ignite. Instantly, you summon your kindest, gentlest, quietest self.  There’s a strong impulse to slip into the murky water and offer a hug of some sort, but touching a manatee is a state and federal offense, so you hold back.  Instead, hardly believing your good fortune, you remain onboard the boat, taking 64 photos and videos while slowly sing-song-whispering, “hello … hi … hi there … hi, friend …”  

In the canal as the sun is slipping down, with the engine stilled and we humans reverentially quiet, it feels like a small, hushed, completely adorable miracle.

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We came upon this stout little manatee and its pod-mates at the end of a trip that held the hope for a bucket list experience, which was, in fact, to see a manatee.  I’m not generally a bucket-lister, and I don’t recommend vacationing with an elusive bucket list agenda; chances are, if your bucket remains empty, your otherwise marvelous trip will end with a small *mostly marvelous asterisk.  Pursuing a bucket list experience also has the potential for aggressively overtaking a nice leisurely non-agenda.  My own effort bounced between assertively-searching hope and the sober acknowledgment that nature is fundamentally wild and thus non-conforming to the human plan. Guess which effort dominated?

We started our manatee mission with such promise.  Rick signed us up for a “Mangroves and Manatees” kayak excursion weeks in advance; with that kind of manatee-forward marketing, I skipped the fine print ("Marine life like turtles, stingrays, dolphins, and manatees can sometimes be spotted nearby") and was giddy with optimism.

However, while we did paddle through remarkable tunnels of twisty mangroves (one very good thing in their own right), the manatees (and turtles and stingrays and dolphins) were elsewhere that day.  And so for two more days and upon the advice of various local restaurant servers, tour guides, and Reddit threads, we visited three marinas, one waterfront county park, and one waterfront state park (again no manatees, but we did glom onto a nature walk led by a sharp-witted bartender-turned-botany-whiz named Susan.  Here's a gumbo-limbo tree — what a name!):

It was now our last evening; I had made reluctant peace with no manatee sightings and now turned my attention to the stress of a relaxing sunset cruise under non-relaxing wind conditions.  I asked our captain — a large, gruff guy named Bobby — what he thought about the weather before we boarded his small boat.  He said we were “on the bubble” in terms of departing, but then — without further assessment — off we sped into the frothy whitecaps of Florida Bay.  As it turned out, Bobby was merely faux-gruff; he became funny and personable as soon as we left the marina, which helped me avoid catastrophizing about capsizing.  And then, just minutes later, Bobby smoothly steered us from the ragged waves into a calm, glassy canal … where a small pod of manatees had gathered.

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In a diverse world of underwater creatures — each one as original and captivating as the next — manatees still seem set apart, slowly and comfortably going their own way.  They are not alpha and awe-striking like the whales; they are not fearsomely toothy like the piranhas and sharks; they are not playfully zippy like the frolicking speedster dolphins.  They are, instead, the friendly amblers of the underneath, unhurriedly gliding toward their next feast of seagrass in underwater meadows.  Meadows!  They are pacifistic type-B herbivores — so-called sea cows — who, we learned, mosey into nearby marinas for afternoon snacks of freshwater spilling from the hoses rinsing off early-morning charter boats.

It's not in the best form to anthropomorphize creatures of the wild, ascribing them human traits and believing they exist mainly for our interest and delight.  I try to be better — I do — but I just cannot help it: manatees are the very definition of aquatic warm-fuzzy delight.  It’s a comfort just thinking about all the ways to describe them: peaceful, engaging, lumbering but graceful, wizened, wholesome, portly yet somehow weightless, trusting, slow-going, buoyant, relaxed, non-demanding, curious, intelligent, gentle, vulnerable, primeval, and knowing.  Like fluffy little lambs and affable capybaras, manatees are among the innocents of the animal world.  And when you’re lucky enough to spot them moving through the water, they seem nearly mythical.  

The manatees in our canal were fuzzy with brown-green algae, navigating near our boat like soft, plump, nautical balloons from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, tipping slightly with the wind.  A manatee’s big, curved barrel shape has a humble, slumping, sweet potato* quality, a modest posture of peaceful intent.  Their paddle-like flippers — so central to their charm — are versatile tools for steering through currents, scooping up food, and scratching the random itch.  Their wrinkly, whiskered snouts are marvels of marine mammal anatomy, efficiently funneling air when they surface to breathe every few minutes.  And their small, crinkled, downturned eyes — thickly filmed to ward off infection and widely positioned just so — are, for me, their most disarming feature of all.  I look into them with a genuine wish for conversation.  What have you seen today?  Where did you go?  Did you find enough seagrass to eat?  Tell me everything.

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To see a manatee is to want to protect a manatee.  Manatees spend their lives in warm shallow water where sunlight can reach the vegetation that sustains them.  While this near-surface, near-shore habitat makes for accessible and ecstatic human sightings like ours, it also increases their risk of boat and propeller strikes, fishnet entanglement, shrinking food sources from shoreline development, and exposure to fertilizer and sewage runoff, which in turn fuels Red Tide and other harmful algal blooms.  But here’s some good news: both legal and common sense/common decency protection is slowly paying off.  We learned that in 2017, manatees shifted in official conservation language from “endangered” to “threatened” … which doesn’t sound completely satisfying, but it’s a hopeful trend.  Protect what's precious, right?

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When I boarded our flight back to Denver the next day, anticipating both turbulent air and continuing turbulence in the news, I channeled the quiet mystery and comfort and safety of manatees, envisioning them calmly, contentedly gliding toward their next batch of sun-dappled seagrass.  I pictured their sweetly sloping eyes, their well-mannered flippers, their shag-carpeted coat of barnacles and algae, and their docile, down-sloped overbite ... that would never actually bite.  When a peaceful scene of manatees at last filled all the screen space in my mind, I unclenched my hand from the armrest, peered out the window, and slowly exhaled.  Try it for yourself.  As a soothing and/or cheering strategy, I cannot recommend it more. 

Photo by NOAA via Unsplash

*The sweet potato description comes from one of my sisters — it's endearingly accurate and now I can never unsee it!

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HERE ARE THREE GOOd THINGS TO DO:

1. Donate to (and learn more from) reputable manatee conservation organizations like the Save the Manatee Club — fyi, founded in part by the late, great Jimmy Buffett 🌴.

AND/OR FOR A CHARITABLE MORNING WAKE-UP:

2. Order coffee from Manatee Gourmet Coffee, which supports several well-vetted manatee conservation orgs through sales of their coffee beans ☕️.

   SHOPPING ALERT!! Manatee Gourmet Coffee is also sold in The Fresh Market stores located in the eastern half of the U.S. and in numerous Costco locations throughout Florida. SO EASY!!

AND/OR FOR YOUR POSTAL NEEDS:

3. Buy/order Save Manatees First-Class Forever stamps from the USPS to help spread awareness for manatee conservation. I get a jolt of happiness every time I stick one on an envelope 📬.

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EXTRA GOOD

ALSO LINKED THROUGH THE EXTRA GOOD PAGE HERE

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2025

1..GOOD-NATURED: If you haven’t had the chance to see a manatee in the wild, here's the next best thing: Manatee Webcams via Save the Manatee Club

I now have the manatee webcams set up for background peace and everyday marine magic. (The underwater cam at Homosassa Springs is my current favorite — and it's better with the mermaid-y music turned off.)

I guarantee your blood pressure will drop well within the normal range upon viewing their leisurely aquatic (non)pace.

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2..GOOD NEWS: From The Optimist, a weekly newsletter from the Washington Post: "Husband Scours 18 Tons of Rotten Food Waste to Find Wife's Wedding Rings"

Okay, this story jumped out at me for three reasons:

a.) Talk about gritty, grubby, gallant commitment — I tip my hat to you, Steve Van Ysseldyk 😬🗑️😬!

b.)  My first professional job included giving tours at a state-of-the-art landfill-partially-turned-golf course; I wore my high heels while driving a very large cushy van over the hills and discussing leachate management systems. It was all surprisingly fun!  Props to this story's compost facility manager Denny Webster for lending a hand — there are many very good people in the generally thankless job of managing our wide rivers of debris.

c.) I lost my own wedding ring one sad spring day in 1997, either in our Westport, CT backyard* (tiny house/big yard) or somewhere along the three-minute walk from our house to CVS. Beautiful solitaire / never found / lingering guilt and longing after all these years.

*We lived across from Winslow Park near the old People's Bank at the corner of Post Rd and Compo Rd N for reference. Monetary reward and your own personal pride upon belated discovery — and I bet The Optimist would write about you, too 😇.

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3..GOOD MUSIC: A few Sundays ago, Rick and I saw Brandi Carlile and her band perform at Red Rocks — it was a rollicking night, both intimate and exuberant with her mesmerizing voice soaring out into the full-moon night.

Brandi Carlile at Red Rocks, 9/7/25

The show ended with a pack of kids from her immediate and extended family joyously jumping and singing with her onstage. The fun was INFECTIOUS. Her music is singular — here's a 2022 video of her performing "The Story" on Saturday Night Live:

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SEE YOU HERE NEXT WEEK FOR ANOTHER BATCH OF GOOD

😀