Eckerd College Search and Rescue members trained with Florida Fish and Wildlife to learn the skills necessary to assist on a manatee rescue last Spring Semester. Photo by of Penh Alicandro ’22
Mason Scheibe was sitting in her dorm doing homework when she got the call.
It was mid-afternoon on March 24. A second mate and radio operator for the Eckerd College Search and Rescue Team, Mason learned that a manatee was in distress not far from campus. She grabbed her gear and rushed to the College’s Waterfront Complex.
Mason, a sophomore animal studies and psychology student from West Chester, Pennsylvania, and three other EC-SAR students were picked up by members of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and driven to a boat ramp at Big Bayou, a waterfront neighborhood off Tampa Bay in south St. Petersburg.
“We boarded an FWC boat, went to the neighborhood, and there was a manatee swimming around a dock,” Mason explained. “It was a large adult male. We got him in a net and pulled him alongside the boat. He was big, so there were a lot of hands on the net. Once we got him on board, we noticed he was a little skinny and had a weird-looking chunk taken out of his tail. We took him back to the boatramp, and he was transferred to ZooTampa at Lowry Park.”
The manatee was later determined to be ill and had suffered a recent watercraft injury on his tail.
EC-SAR members Mason Scheibe, Isabella Spanos, Georgia Summers, and Alexandria Wolfe assisted in two manatee rescues in one day. Photo courtesy of FWC
End of story? Hardly. This would be a two-for Tuesday.
“We hopped in the FWC truck to go back to campus and they said, “Hey, you guys want to go on another rescue?’” Mason says.
“There was a manatee who looked sick swimming around Coffee Pot Bayou. So we drove there and launched again. This was another male, younger and smaller, swimming under some residential docks. He looked thin, like maybe he was weaned too fast, or there wasn’t enough food around.”
The second manatee was found to be underweight and had lesions from cold stress that weren’t resolving properly. It was also taken to ZooTampa.
“I’ve been on other cases where we assisted in the recovery of dead manatees, but these were my first two live cases,” adds Mason, who is a volunteer firefighter near her hometown. “It was really exciting to get to help and watch FWC in action. I’m so grateful to be a part of it and see how everything happens.”
The other members of the EC-SAR team that day were Isabella Spanos, a junior marine science student from Bradenton, Florida; Georgia Summers, a sophomore marine science student from Orlando; and Alexandria Wolfe, a first-year marine science student from San Antonio, Texas.
For nearly 15 years, EC-SAR team members helped the FWC locate manatees, dolphins or whales that were in distress or had died in local waters. The EC-SAR teams typically provided the FWC with detailed locations of the animals. When FWC crews arrived on scene, they captured the animals and loaded them in their boats.
But last May, led by Ryan Dilkey ’98, Associate Director of the Waterfront, and Andy Garrett ’99, a manatee rescue coordinator for the FWC who leads the FWC’s Marine Mammal Pathobiology Lab on Eckerd’s campus, the College announced an expanded collaboration with the FWC. EC-SAR students are now trained to help capture and transfer the sick or injured animals to an FWC boat. The animals are usually transported to ZooTampa or SeaWorld Orlando, facilities that have marine mammal veterinary care for injured or distressed animals.
EC-SAR has assisted in more than a dozen manatee rescues since May. But never two on the same day.
Krista Park ’22, coordinator of training and operations for the EC-SAR team, was the coordinator for the March 24 rescues, as well as for other manatee cases earlier in the year. She was the person who called Mason that Tuesday afternoon. “As far as I am aware we have never had a successful back-to-back capture until that week,” she says. “I think the only challenges were timing—the students were a little late to our weekly team meeting.”
Founded in 1971, EC-SAR is the only college maritime rescue team in the country. “It’s a great opportunity for the students,” Krista adds. “Many of them are going into the marine science field and this is a really good way to get a foot in the door.”
