Support for the Manatee Webcams at Blue Spring State Park was made possible by a donation to Save the Manatee Club as a memorial gift in honor of the late Mrs. Norma Norton, a Florida resident who cared deeply for manatees.

• Read Manatee Updates from this season as well as past seasons.
• Identify manatees in the Club’s adoption program using Wayne Hartley’s Scar Pattern Chart (pdf).
• See Wayne’s Scar Charts for all of the Blue Spring manatees (pdf).
• Learn about Blue Spring State Park and why it is vital habitat for manatees.
• Check out our Species Spotlight to learn about other living things that share the manatee’s habitat at Blue Spring (pdf).

At Ellie Schiller Wildlife State Park, visitors can see manatees both in the in-ground pool at the Manatee Care Center and beneath the surface of the spring bowl in the Underwater Observatory. Manatees can be seen in the entire spring above the water, too. Manatees are a subtropical species and cannot tolerate water temperatures below 68 degrees F. The park’s natural freshwater spring bowl remains a constant 72-degree temperature year-round, serving as vital habitat for manatees and various species of fish who enter from the river. Several captive manatees, who cannot be released into the wild, remain at the park year-round, enhancing the park’s daily manatee education programs. These manatees — Ariel, Betsy, and Electra — are in Save the Manatee Club’s Adopt-A-Manatee® program.

Save the Manatee Club has a historic partnership with Ellie Schiller Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park, dating to 1989 when the Club’s Adopt-A-Manatee program began. Save the Manatee Club has provided funding for a spring run gate at the park that allows wild manatees to swim into the main spring area, which acts as an important source of warmth in the winter. The Club has also funded heating support tanks, used to treat manatees with cold stress; veterinary care; and the park’s “Manatee Watch” pontoon boat, used for rescues.

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