A female manatee was left stranded on a beach in Florida after a mating session tired it out.
The animal was discovered on Disappearing Island in Ponce Inlet, Florida, after a herd went back to sea and abandoned her. Rescue teams waited for the manatee to make its own way back into the sea, but it was too exhausted.
After a group of tourists gathered to help, it was eventually released back out into the water using a canvas stretcher, around six hours after it washed onto the sand.
Jim Yurecka, the man who found the beached animal, told ABC News he saw a group of manatees in shallow waters on Wednesday morning. After a while, the group went back to the ocean, leaving the female behind.
He said: ‘I was trying to see if it would go back itself. But it wasn’t moving. ‘If it was left on shore on low tide at night, it might not make it until the next morning.’
FWC spokesman Brandon Basino told the station it took them two hours to reach the scene from their closest office in Jacksonville. They waited for the female manatee to move back to the ocean by itself, Basino said, but it appeared that it was too exhausted to move.
‘It is quite natural for female manatees to swim to shallow water during mating season,’ Georgia Zern, manager at the Marine Science Center told ABC. ‘The manatee was only about 30 feet away from the water,’ Zern said. ‘It just appeared that the female manatee was too tired to go back by itself.’
‘The Disappearing Island is a popular spot for tourists, so there were a lot of people nearby, Zern added. ‘In the end, about 20 people used a canvas stretcher and lifted it back into the water.’ Source
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