Georgia is one of the most endearing manatees at Blue Spring State Park. A favorite of Wayne Hartley, Save the Manatee Club’s Manatee Specialist, she has been known to bump his research canoe just to say hi. Yet Georgia has also created many headaches over the years.
Georgia was rescued in Brunswick, Georgia on September 18, 1991. At the time, she was an orphaned calf, and probably a newborn, as she was just over four feet long and weighed only 64 pounds. She was taken to SeaWorld Orlando and released back into the wild at Blue Spring on April 29, 1997. At her release, Georgia was close to six years of age, over ten feet long, and weighed 1,635 pounds! When she was put into the water, she went south a quarter mile and swam into the Blue Spring Run, where she has wintered every year since.
At Blue Spring State Park, Georgia discovered people, and she immediately associated them with her kindly caretakers at SeaWorld. This meant that the Blue Spring staff had to constantly keep people away from Georgia for her own protection. She was also reported checking out fishermen and other boats while out in the St. Johns River. Finally, worried for her safety, Georgia was moved far from Blue Spring to a more uninhabited part of the river. But the next winter, she returned to the park with her son Peaches in tow. Save the Manatee Club paid for signs at the park asking people not to touch the manatees, and a later ban on swimming and diving during manatee season helped to solve many of Georgia’s “people problems.” Georgia is a good reminder that the best way to protect manatees, and all wildlife, is to "look, but don’t touch," and don’t feed them or give them water.
Georgia has attracted her share of adventure, and her behavior has also been the subject of several stories over the years. For example, when Georgia was released, she was fitted with a satellite tracking device or “tag” for two years to monitor her location and behavior. During the second year, her tag was reported as being submerged in the water. It turned out the device had been punctured by an alligator! Alligators and manatees share much of the same habitat, and a gator has never been seen behaving aggressively toward a manatee. However, the transmitters used for tracking float on the surface of the water, about three feet from the manatee, and they probably look like an easy meal.
Once, before the swim ban was instituted at the park, Georgia found a pair of jeans hanging from the dock and swam off with them in her mouth. Fortunately, she didn’t go far before she dropped them. Another time, one of the rangers went home after a long week of dealing with Georgia and swimmers at the park, only to find Georgia in his backyard! His house bordered the river and had been flooded by recent rainstorms.
Yet another time, Wayne swam out to recover a radio, tape recorder, and coffee cup after a rascal manatee named Wanda had tipped over his research canoe. “At that time of day, most of the manatees would have been out of the spring run,” says Wayne. “But inside five minutes, Georgia, who I thought was at least a third of a mile away, was at my knee. What else could I have expected?”
These days, Georgia appears to have settled down a bit. She is a good mother and has given birth to six calves: Peaches, Savannah, Macon, and two unnamed male calves. In 2008, Georgia gave birth to a female named Destiny-Kaitlyn. Sadly, Destiny-Kaitlyn died of a liver abscess just last year. Georgia became a grandmother when daughter Macon gave birth to Mabel in 2006.
Georgia seems to really enjoy her annual winter trip to Blue Spring State Park. She is one of the first manatees to arrive for the season and often the last to leave, and she usually makes several visits to the park. Last year, Georgia came in with a new male calf. And on one memorable day during the season, she turned up under the research canoe, pushing her head into the U.S. Geological Survey photographer who was there doing manatee research work. Georgia and her calf made 29 visits and were attendance champions for the 2011-2012 season. They closed out the season on March 13th.
This year, Georgia was right back at Blue Spring to officially open the season on October 29th, when Florida experienced a brief cold spell. Her yearling calf is still with her, which Wayne says is common for Georgia. Georgia and the yearling have made several visits to the park, even though it has been a relatively warm winter. It looks like her yearling is in the process of being weaned, because she is often sighted without him and vice-versa. During one chilly period in late December, Georgia was spotted in the spring boil with an orphaned cold-stressed calf she has apparently adopted. At last report, Georgia was still caring for the little guy. At the time that this article was published, biologists had taken skin and other samples from Georgia and the calf, as they try to decide if the calf needs to be captured for treatment. Check our Blue Spring web cam for updates and to see Georgia and other manatees from the Blue Spring population.
