Swim with Manatees in the Wild

I first saw a picture of a manatee in grade 6 when one of my classmates chose the marine mammal for her presentation during our unit on the animal kingdom. I learned that manatees were actually mistaken for mermaids by explorers approaching the ‘new world’ (even Christopher Colombus made the mistake!) When I started looking up things to put on my central Florida bucket list for an upcoming trip, I knew that I wanted to swim with manatees.

I decided to sign up for a tour with Plantation Crystal River, which offered 3 hour tours, including wetsuit and snorkel rental. They offer tours all year round at 7am and 10:30am daily for $65 USD per person. You’re more likely to see manatees early in the morning, but we opted for the 10:30 tour so we could sleep in.

When we arrived at Plantation Crystal River, we were given wetsuits to change into and then watched a short safety video required by the government. The video explained that we weren’t allowed to touch, chase down, or surround the manatees. If a manatee approaches us, we had to stay still and passively observe the animal.

Luckily, there were only 2 other people on our tour, so we were able to get a lot of interaction from our guides. They told us that it may take 5 minutes or 2 hours to find manatees. We happened to find 2 within a few minutes. Our guides instructed us on how to get into the water without making a lot of splashing which would scare off the manatees. We got to see a mother and a baby, which was quite the sight! They didn’t seem to care too much that we were around, and spent most of the time eating. The manatees actually have some moss growing on them, and I once mistook a manatee for a giant rock (they really look quite similar!).

After the manatees swam off, we all boarded back on the boat with an hour left on our tour. We were unlikely to see anymore manatees, so our guides took us to Three Sisters Springs to swim in its crystal clear waters. Right outside the entrance to Three Sisters, our guides spotted a few manatees and we hopped back in the water to check them out. We even saw some turtles getting some sun near the riverbank.

We had some time to spare after checking out the manatees, and headed into Three Sisters. There’s a cost to enter the springs by land, but if you swim into the springs, it’s free! The water was absolutely stunning; we could see right down to the bottom of the Springs and actually see where the water was entering through the ground. There wasn’t a lot of fish in the area, but it was still spectacular.

After about a half hour, we got back in the boat and the guides made us some hot chocolate to warm up. We headed back to Plantation Crystal River to get changed and have a shower. Our guides had GoPro cameras in the water with them, and we were able to look through all the photos in the office and purchase them on a USB. I brought my own waterproof camera (The AKASAO EK4000), so I had a pile of photos and videos to look through.

I’d highly recommend taking a tour with Plantation Crystal River to swim with manatees! It would be amazing to come back and do a tour in prime manatee season. If you’re looking for other things to do in Central Florida, read my post about picking oranges at a citrus grove.