Sirenians hold many secrets and have for hundreds of years. In the wake of the New England Patriots “Deflate-gate” scandal, I went undercover–and underwater–to see what manatees knew about the mysterious deflated footballs.
Manatees are experts on buoyancy, bubbles and breathing. They don’t even think about PSI when inflating and deflating themselves, it all comes naturally! Manatees know a lot more than us about what constitutes a hard and a soft football. Here is a photographic lead documented on January 20, 2015.
“Uh…, it wasn’t me” says this manatee back in Three Sisters Springs, Crystal River Florida. I found out more on further investigative questioning…, you’ll see in the video evidence below…
Following that lead from Tuesday, January 20th, I realized that some manatees seemed to know a whole lot more than I did about “Deflate-gate”. Like a good investigator I donned mask, snorkel, switched my DSLR camera to video mode and followed up a couple of days later on Thursday, January 22nd. After much flipper pointing from other manatees and painstaking underwater investigation and observation, I found this male manatee who confessed to the deed! In fact, he not only owned-up, he showed his ultimate prowess at inflating and deflating. “Footballs are a real piece of cake…, said he. I live in Florida and I’m a New England Patriot fan. Go Pats!”
After my initial discovery, this big bull manatee continued to show me how it’s done! He didn’t dodge the subject at all. In fact, he seemed proud to take the credit.
OK now that’s solved and we can look forward to a good football game this coming Sunday!
Blow bubbles happily manatees!
Best, Carol