Sometimes when we are diving we find things that catch our eyes but yet, the conditions are less than ideal. Other times we go on a trip where we expect to see one or more particular animals, yet they just don’t show up. Is the thrill of getting to see one or more rare or unusual animals what keeps us diving? Maybe, but there is probably more to it than that.

About seven years ago I had a trip planned that would allow me to go to a location that has a high probability of seeing manatees. With my usual luck it snowed so hard that the flights would not go from Dallas to Florida so that trip like many of late, wound up on the scrape heap.

This year we traveled to Placentia Belize and while it is unusual to see manatees in Belize it is at least possible. We had been sailing for a week and had not seen any manatees. Now we had seen quite a bit of wildlife, but we had not found a single manatee even though we had been in some relatively good environmental conditions to spot them. We saw dolphins. We saw turtles.

And sometimes we could get pretty close to the animals.

We saw sharks.

We saw quite good variety of tropical fish and other marine life.

But no manatees. I had all but given up hope of spotting any. We got to the last day of sailing and cruised into a small island. The water visibility was pretty poor. I think I was the only one to get into the water to snorkel. We had long since burned up all of our air tanks so I was relegated to snorkeling. I took my underwater camera and left the strobes off because I figured they would just light up all the particulate in the water. I had been in the water over an hour and had seen a few interesting critters, but nothing particularly interesting. I think I had taken maybe 3 or 4 shots with the rest of time just looking for anything interesting. The reef went pretty much up to the shoreline and I had started from the boat and I swam more or less towards the island. There were a couple of small dogs on shore that would periodically bark at me. I guess they just wanted to let me know they were there. I had swum the length of the island (it was small) when the reef pretty much petered out and I found myself over mostly turtle grass. There wasn’t even any self respecting turtle grazing on the turtle grass. I was about to turn around and head to the boat when I saw movement in the water. It was maybe 25 meters away so I swam toward it. As I swam the water got murkier and murkier. And after a few seconds it occurred to me what I was looking at through the murk…

Yep, it was that long hoped for manatee. So I kicked hard to try to get closer. Unfortunately, he heard me. With a tail flip or two he was out of range.

Oh well, I guess I will have to find another one….