27 Photos From Our Manatee Swim

Shae and I spent the month of August 2020 in Florida. That wasn’t ideal due to the spike of COVID-19 cases in the state, but we’d booked a month-long non-refundable Airbnb before that proved to be an issue, so we decided to stay there but avoid doing much in the state.

The main exception was going swimming with manatees in the Crystal River. Shae’s mom and stepdad joined us in Florida for a couple of weeks so that Shae and her mom could celebrate their birthdays together as those are only a day apart.

For Shae’s mom’s birthday, we booked a manatee swim experience for the four of us with Crystal River Watersports which was so much fun.

Before setting off to see the manatees, we got kitted out in our wetsuits and watched a short video letting us know about good etiquette when swimming with manatees. That involved not touching, stroking or petting manatees which, on the one hand, was a little disappointing. On the other hand, we did appreciate that Crystal River Watersports placed an emphasis on caring for manatees like this, so we kept our hands to ourselves during the snorkel tour!

Before long we were ready to go, so we headed out on the boat with the blue roof below. Crystal River Watersports offers different types of manatee swims – you can go with a larger group to save money or book a private tour.

Due to COVID-19, we wanted to limit as much contact with people as we could, so we booked a private tour. That meant it was just the four of us, along with the boat’s captain Vince and our tour guide Adrienne.

The boat ride out to the manatees took about 45 minutes, with Captain Vince and Adrienne telling us about the local area, ecology, manatees and more.

Winter and early spring is apparently the best time to go swimming with manatees in Florida as there are so many of them there. Although you’re not supposed to touch them, manatees themselves don’t abide by those rules and so they’ll swim against you, chew your hair, etc.

Seeing as we went for our manatee swim in August, there were far fewer manatees. While that was a shame, it meant there were also far fewer people out on similar tours. After boating around for a little while at our final destination seeking out some manatees, we came upon a cow (a female manatee) and her calf (baby manatee).

We’d seen plenty of pictures of manatees in the past, but we had no clue that they were as large as they are. They were like giant floating boulders, but apparently the ones we saw weren’t even all that big.

Manatees spend a large portion of the day sleeping. They have to rise to the surface every so often to breathe, but they do this automatically in their sleep. The mom and her calf were therefore asleep for much of our time with them, despite their movement suggesting otherwise.

Much of their day is therefore spent in one of three positions:

• Surface resting – This is when they float on the surface
• Column resting – This is when they float halfway between the river bed and the surface
• Bottom resting – This is when they rest on the river bed

Shae and I had our phones with us in waterproof pouches, plus Shae was carrying our GoPro to record some video footage. Unfortunately our waterproof pouches weren’t great; they kept our phones perfectly dry, but the pouches weren’t touch sensitive enough and so they didn’t take anywhere near as many photos as we thought they had at the time.

The nice thing is that our tour guide Adrienne had a waterproof camera with her and took photos throughout. You can then buy a USB stick (in the shape of a manatee!) containing all the photos at the end of the trip for $30. That seemed like a very reasonable cost considering how much many other attractions charge for photos, especially seeing as it included a USB stick and close to 100 photos. A lot of the photos in the post were therefore taken by Adrienne.

Pro tip if you’re male – be sure to shave before going snorkeling. I hadn’t shaved for several days and so had fairly lengthy stubble when we went swimming with manatees. The stubble meant that the mask wasn’t staying tight to my face, so kept leaking in water. I was therefore having a hard time snorkeling as water would leak in the mask and go up my nose which made for a really disconcerting experience.

Unfortunately I’m not built like a manatee who can seemingly open and close their nostrils at will.

After swimming with the momma manatee and her calf for a while, we got back in the boat and moved to another spot where we saw another manatee. He was sleeping for a little while, before waking up and swimming away quickly. I was lucky enough to be in just the right spot as he left because he swam right by me.

I mentioned earlier that Shae took some video footage using our GoPro. Here’s a short video she originally put together for her Traveling Teach YouTube channel.

Final Thoughts

We had a fantastic time swimming with manatees on a tour with Crystal River Watersports. Captain Vince and Adrienne were very friendly and knowledgeable, so we’d highly recommend them if you’re looking for a manatee experience in the Crystal River area of Florida. They run other activities like scallop tours too.

Manatee Swim Ticket Cost

We paid a total of $319.20 for our experience as this was a private tour for the four of us. At the time of writing this post in September 2020, it’s possible to book a cheaper tour if you don’t mind going with other guests as they’re charging $65 per person with the third person’s ticket being free.

Address

Crystal River Watersports, 2380 N Suncoast Blvd, Crystal River, FL 34428