Lovely blue spring water with adorable pudgy wrinkly faces and warm Florida rainbow sunlight? Sign me up! That’s what one who loves manatees dreams about! We are lucky to still have opportunities to experience these charismatic sirens on their own terms.

I’m updating my site with recent manatee photographs from the last two fall/winter seasons: 2016/2017 and 2017/2018. There’s over twenty new images already with more to come. Manatee photography has always been an adventure and a challenge, but I relish the challenge. I’m just glad there are still some opportunities to chronicle the manatee’s antics in pretty conditions.

Here’s a partial screenshot of my Oceangrant.com site (Portfolio Site link in menu above). If you click on New Images you will see new additions over the next few weeks. All from the last two seasons:

I’ll tell you a story about one of the new images.
How cute is this little rainbow sunlit manatee princess? She’s young, possibly about three or four months old. The wavy edged tail and her small size shows she’s very young, but not an infant as she has developed the calf bumpy skin she will grow out of. Her buoyancy and swimming ability was also very good which points to more than a few weeks old.

Mom was resting nearby. Frequently when mother manatee lead their calves back into the safe springs, mom will take a little snooze while junior plays. That was the case here and we were delighted to quietly observe the tiny manatee tot enthusiastically explore the exciting freshwater springs! It truly inspires joy in one’s heart to see a manatee calf’s “Joie de vivre”!💙Theo, my husband, joined me in the water. We were celebrating my February 2017 birthday on this afternoon before. The next day I was to have a successful photoshoot with members of the Visitor’s Center, so it was a memorable time with memorable manatees!

I think you will agree that combing through the last two season’s images yielded a cutie here! I’ll have more posts about various new images in the future. And many more new photographs.

Additionally…, speaking of the future, I’m waiting for the official announcement to come in a few weeks but we were told we could share the exciting news… There’s going to be a manatee image of mine hanging in the Nature’s Best/Windland Smith Rice photography exhibit on the second floor of the Smithsonian Natural History Museum! I’m thrilled to be among those Highly Honored images to be displayed for a year. There will be more posts about this coming!

Until then,

Best, Carol