We took a short trip while in Port Charlotte to see some manatees.  Manatees are fairly common in this part of the gulf coast of Florida, and in the cold weather when the gulf waters get a bit colder they come upstream into canals and harbors where the water is a bit warmer.

We had several options to see manatees, some places even allow you to ‘swim with the manatees’, who are very calm and tame.  These places, however, are pretty expensive and require a boat trip to get to where you can see manatees whether or not you want to get into the water with them.  There are some places like Sea World where they have tanks containing captive manatees.  There was one place in nearby Fort Myers where a power plant discharging warm waters into a river attract wild manatees during the winter.  We chose to see manatees there as they are wild manatees and not captive.  We knew we wouldn’t get real good views of the manatees by watching them from a shoreline rather than seeing them in a tank or from underwater with them.  We saw lots of ‘shapes’ in the water as the manatee browsed around under water, and saw them poke their noses above the surface to breath.  Here are pictures we took at Manatee Park, near the power plant along with some underwater pictures I found on the internet to show what they look like in more detail.