October 18, 1999 Dear Mom and Dad, |
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I witnessed something yesterday, while fishing in the southeastern delta, that very few people ever get to see. A rare and truly unexpected event. Since I rate this as a significant occurrence, I will give you the complete story...
A co-worker and I met at one p.m. Monday afternoon at Mizell’s boat launch and bait shop on the causeway. Mizell’s is just outside Spanish Fort on the far eastern bank of the Blakley River, which is the eastern border of the Mobile Delta. We drove north up the Blakley River to an expansive part of the Delta called Tensaw Pointe. Tensaw Pointe is the junction of the Tensaw and Blakley Rivers. The area of water is very wide, however, the river channels themselves are not significantly oversized. The expansive shallow grass flats make the area appear large and wide. The presence of these cane beds and grass flats creates a prime food chain experience, especially in the fall when the shrimp population is at its peak. The water flow in the rivers is low, the salinity is high, and the speckled trout are in the river.
So there we are, Jason and I, fishing away trying to entice some very uninterested specks into taking a cocahoe jig instead of a fat white shrimp, when I noticed that there were some odd currents happening in about three feet of water. It thought to myself, “I don’t remember there being a tree in the water there.” and kept fishing. Just a short while later I felt that something was just “wrong” with the water patterns in the shallows that we were fishing. I was stunned when a Volkswagon-sized object surfaced, lifted its disproportionately small head out of the water, and puffed through its oversized nostrils, staring right at me mind you, no farther than six feet away, as if to say, “why are you here, and what are you doing?”. A manatee is what it was. And not just one manatee but at least five manatees. The funny water patterns I was noticing were not fifty pound black drum fish, they were eight hundred pound manatees.
I was so surprised that I didn’t raise my voice or anything. I just stood there. Recovering, I said, “Jason” but he had already seen the creature also and said very calmly, “I see it. It’s a manatee.”. So there we stood not for a few seconds but for ten or fifteen minutes watching a group of manatees munch hydrilla and ribbon grass in water as clear as it has ever been in the lower Delta.
The largest of the group was a female that was nursing a calf. I guessed she weighed about six-hundred pounds. Dr. Regan, administrator of the Manatee Watch program and Professor of Biology at Springhill College, said that the weight of a nursing female was probably well in excess of one thousand pounds. He stated that in 1992 one was found dead of old age (natural causes) near the Magnolia River and its weight was near fourteen hundred pounds. Evidently their bones are very dense. In addition to reporting the to Dr. Regan, (who in turn reports all Alabama sightings to the NMFS in Jacksonville, FL) I reported it to Dr. Shipp at the University of South Alabama, the Alabama Department of Game and Fish, and Bill Finch, the environmental writer at the Mobile Press Register.
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All of the people that I talked to said that it was very rare to encounter so many manatees at one time. Evidently they are usually singular or mother/calf units. Dr. Regan said that they might have been incidentally grouped together to begin their southern migration.
It was a fascinating experience. It seemed so out of place. One thousand plus pound marine mammals checking me out in the Blakley River.
While we were in the Florida Keys (where we never saw a manatee I might add) a bait shop boy told me that manatees like running water and funny noises like pumps or trolling motors. After we had watched them quietly for a long time, I told Jason to stick his hand in the water and make splashing sound. He did. Within one or two minutes every manatee in the group was within thirty feet of the boat. Coincidence? Maybe. I know one thing for sure..., they were not scared of us. However, we were, and had been very quiet. No radios and we had slanted the outboard off some distance from the flat. They would actually stick their heads up out of the water and look at us. After long enough I decided to just go on with the trolling motor. I figured the fishing behind six-thousand pounds of rooting manatees might not be too good. We watched them move slowly down the bank and ten eventually I could not longer see their “current” or their colors in the water. Their color was lighter than the sediment so they were slightly visible underwater.
I may fish in the Delta for the rest of my life and never again witness such a sight. Great conditions and luck. Of course, no camera.
Love,
Chad
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