The new manatee cover photograph for Alert Diver Magazine, photographer of the week on Dive Photo Guide and the results of testing out the new Xperia phone for Sony underwater; all this has resulted in a lot of recent “buzz” about my manatee photographs. I thought I’d shed a little more light on myself and what I do.
Of course, all this is in addition to the comprehensive collection of manatee images on my own website: Oceangrant.com
Selfie — Carol Grant Waiting For Manatees On A Cold Morning
Movies often evoke dramatic thoughts and pictures, even years later. Such is the case when I saw the movie “The Godfather”. In a suspenseful moment, after Sal Tessio retrieved a package including a fish, Clemenza says , “It’s a Sicilian message. It means Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes.” I must admit I got chills when I first saw it and I never forgot that scene. But now something’s changed and I can’t quite conjure up the drama connected with that scene. Why, you ask? I think this photograph will explain why…
Manatee Sleeps With The Fishes — January 10, 2014
Manatees “sleep with fishes” and they do seem to enjoy it so!
Happy 2014! May it be a great year for man and manatees!
It’s heartwarming to look back on some of my most memorable manatee moments of the past year. Even though 2013 saw the highest manatee mortality statistics ever recorded, the manatee population that frequents the Crystal and Homosassa rivers is doing well. Although every manatee encounter is special, here are some from 2013 that I think you will enjoy as I did.
Visit Citrus Cover Manatee
Let me start with a manatee who reached out to the viewer enough to be selected for my second cover for the wonderful and informative Visit Citrus Visitors Guide. I took this photograph in March 2013 when manatees lingered in the clear water of the springs. Many times manatees spread out to feed and socialize by the end of February and in some years it is hard to find them around the springs regularly in March. However in March 2013 we were unexpectedly treated to a lot of sightings and activity! This manatee was quite curious and looks like he really wanted a cover shot — don’t you think so?
Twins!
Manatee mothers usually give birth to one calf and twins are uncommon. Continue reading
Today is Friday the 13th! Though superstition calls for this to be an unlucky day, my experience is it usually has a strong element of luck to it! CC the Manatee was lucky he had so many people concerned during his rehabilitation and after his release — but two weeks ago CC was unlucky enough to encounter what was thought to be a speeding boat, ending his life.
CC the Manatee Finding His Way After Release
Orphaned and weighing only 55 pounds, CC was rescued from the Caloosahatchee River in Ft. Myers, Florida on July 1, 2006. Many manatees that small have a hard time surviving after rescue, but CC triumphed! You could call him a very lucky manatee. Continue reading
Manatees are undoubtedly charismatic creatures! People love manatees, or expressed in more modern jargon: we “heart ♥” manatees. Did you know there are researchers who literally “heart” manatees?
On-Site Field Electrocardiography Of A Manatee’s Heart
Every year dive professionals from all over the world converge at the annual Dive Equipment & Marketing Association (DEMA) show, held on alternate years, in Orlando, Florida and Las Vegas, Nevada. The breadth and diversity of the show would take hours to report, so I’ll focus in on one thing “speaking manatee”.
Manatee Glass Charm Worn by Carol to Get The Conversation Started
My first point of contact was someone I met through social media. Facebook has the potential to link like-minds that may not normally ever meet, through the communication channel of cyberspace. Bernie Campoli is a historical diver and is part of the group of sea heroes I dreamed of meeting, years ago. Come to find out Bernie also helped with research projects on the Florida manatee in the 1980s. This is Bernie’s photograph on this classic manatee poster:
Manatees gather together in the wintertime at various warm water sites around Florida. Some of these manatees frequent natural freshwater springs. Fish also enjoy congregating near the outflows of spring water. It is here that manatees and a number of fish species share the same watery real estate until the weather warms and manatees spread out again. While together in the springs fish often surround manatees as illustrated in this photograph:
Fish Gather Around A Manatee In The Springs
Interaction between fish and manatees is an interesting behavior to observe. In fact some fish, particularly bream also known as sunfish (Lepomis spp.) and sheepshead (Archosargus probatocephalus) are known to continually surround and peck at the manatee’s skin especially while they are resting. Note the bream below are nipping this manatee:
November is Manatee Awareness Month in Florida. For over 30 years proclamations have been officially made to help protect this endangered marine mammal and Florida treasure.
This November is different though, as a sense of foreboding blankets the future of the sirenians here in Florida. This year, 2013 has seen the highest mortality of manatees since record keeping began = 766 manatee deaths as of October 25, 2013 and 769 currently according to Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission records. Of these, 276 manatees died where red tide was prevalent in southwest Florida. Additionally, in this Florida Fish and Wildlife preliminary report an unusually high number of “Undetermined” manatee deaths were reported near the Indian River Lagoon on Florida’s east coast. It is thought to be part of a serious toxic imbalance along with a significant loss of seagrass beds, part of the manatee’s main food source.
Manatees: Hope Springs Eternal
Manatees are curious, gentle, charismatic, and appealing marine mammals, and manatee kids are ten-times so! Whether it’s investigating everything around and about, learning the art of flipper-turning, demonstrating new buoyancy and swimming skills, fine-tuning snout rubbing, meeting other manatees, exploring or just being the subject of its mother’s pride, manatee kid’s antics are just plan cute!
Here are my Top 10 Cute Manatee Kids (all linked from my new Oceangrant.com website that includes many additional photographs of manatee calf cuteness):
#10 – Mother Manatee with Calf Behind – How cute is this? Not only are this mother manatee and her male calf floating peacefully with beautiful reflections in the calm waters, but junior has his snout touching mom’s behind. Awwwww!
Ahhhh new beginnings, the hopeful feeling carries over into my new underwater photography website and blog that I’ve been working on — very diligently. Manatees, manatees and more manatees, the new Oceangrant site starts off with nearly 700 quality photographs, the vast majority focused on our charismatic sirenian the Florida manatee. And I have more manatee photographs to add! I believe this is the largest and best quality collection of diverse and rare images of the Florida manatee around.
PhotoShelter is the service I was interested in using for my redesigned site, and then came the release of their new cutting-edge BEAM templates. I was impressed and chose the new Shuffle design as the best way to display my varied collection of manatee images. Each of the new BEAM templates are cool in their own right, but Shuffle fascinated me with the Portfolio page that can be focused on your website visitor’s needs and interests. I have my Portfolio page divided into five categories that draw from five photo galleries out of my 14+ galleries. It’s intuitive and the structure can be picked up by playing around with it.
Here is how my new manatee portfolio page is set up: First, load time on oceangrant.com (or manatees.photoshelter.com if one finds their web address for my site) is very fast for so many photos, sized for whatever device is being used. Next, clicking on ALL pulls images from each of my featured manatee galleries. It loads them in sequence, e.g., one image from first gallery featured, one image from second, and on and on. ALL quickly displays the most diverse collection, beautifully, on any screen. Note: BEAM is still in beta so I’ve notice some bugs, especially on iPhones, but those are being worked on and the issues are disappearing systematically. Here’s a computer desktop screen shot and one from my iPad of my ALL selection.
This will be the first post on my new Oceangrant blog. There is a feature in my new PhotoShelter account that pulls in this WordPress feed. Interestingly, it doesn’t pull in the first post (maybe it considers the first post to be a test post)? So this will be my first post, with more interesting and eloquent posts and lots of photos to follow. As I understand it this will not be pulled into the feed on my PhotoShelter site, but I will post a manatee photograph just as a “feel-good” gesture. Oddly, it is how I feel after setting up all this stuff! Best, Carol
Sometimes Computer Programs Make Us All Topsy-Turvy
