Posts Tagged ‘Three Sisters Springs’
2.20.10 – Crystal River Manatee Encounter
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
Hello everyone!
Saturday, 2.20.10 finds the Video Dude, along with Roberta, DJ and John LaFLair of Scuba Network on our rented boat headed out to King’s Bay in Crystal River to shoot video of the manatees. This area is a major congregation point for the manatees in the cold weather, as the water is warmer than the ocean and they can huddle together for warmth. Almost immediately upon setting out, we see signs of manatees swimming in the shallow water. We head over to a side canal that leads to Three Sisters Springs and I jump in to begin the adventure of capturing video of these amazing creatures. Visibility is a little murky here, but I was able to get close enough to most of the manatees to get good video. John was able to rub a few manatee backs and get them to play a bit before they swam away.
After staying in that spot for a while, we headed over to Three Sisters Springs, where we discovered the water was much clearer and there were probably close to 200 manatees in various areas around the springs. The water in the springs is only about 3-4ft deep in places, so getting nice “up-close and personal” video of the manatees was fairly easy. Most of the manatees here were sleeping on the bottom, huddled together for warmth, but there were a few that were swimming around and enjoying the attention they were getting. After staying in the springs for over an hour, we headed back to our boat (docked outside the channel into the springs) where I encountered a baby manatee (if you can call a 6ft-long manatee a “baby”) who was very happy to come over and check out my camera and give me some great video moments. Probably the best stuff I shot all day! After that encounter, we motored back to the marina and got some lunch before setting off towards King Spring for our afternoon dive.
Lunch all done and back on the boat, we head over to King Spring inside of King’s Bay just across from our hotel. Unlike our manatee encounters of the morning (which was all done on snorkels), we get to strap on our SCUBA gear and dive into the spring. The water in the top of the spring was a little brackish and green-tinted, but once we dropped down below the point where all the Open Water students were hanging out, it cleared up quite a bit. This was my first cavern/cave dive ever and it was awesome!! We found some Blue Crabs hanging out amid the rocks, John found a Mullet, and we dove around the perimeter of the spring until we came across an exit point and had to come up. What a great dive! After that, we get back on the boat to discover that the wind has picked up a bit, so we do our best to get out of our wet stuff and stay warm while we cruise around the bay a bit more before heading back to the marina.
Tomorrow it’s off to Blue Grotto for some more cavern and cave diving!
A great day of freshwater diving and having new adventures here in Paradise,
The Video Dude
Tags: baby manatee, Blue Crab, Blue Grotto, cave dive, cavern dive, Crystal River, King Spring, King's Bay, manatee, manatees, Mullet, SCUBA Network, Three Sisters Springs, Video Dude
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