Manatee Day

I started the day with another monkey feed. The monkey researchers were still here so the one watched me feed the three in the pre-release cage. It took awhile to get out of the enclosure because they kept trying to go between the double doors to catch a butterfly stuck in there. After breakfast, most of the manatee volunteers went into town for Manatee Day. We got all the supplies from the SACD (Sarteneja Alliance for Conservation and Development) office and then headed to the soccer field. A couple of Wildtracks volunteers have organized a soccer tournament and at each of the past four games have organized an education activity about manatees. There were a bunch of different games and activities for the teams to participate in today, such as a matching game and a manatee maze. Our booth included an activity worksheet with word searches and a crossword. We also asked each player what they can do to protect manatees and they wrote their answer on a cut out manatee and pinned it to the board. All the answers were really good and there were a couple cute ones, like “protect them from being eaten by sharks” (manatees have no natural predators). There was also a poster contest for the teams and then of course the actual soccer tournament. I think all the kids enjoyed it and the local community really supports the manatee conservation efforts. After we walked back, we fed and weighed Duke. He gained four pounds! He’s starting to eat more frames of sea grass and hopefully he continues to improve. Twiggy is still missing even though volunteers searched for her all day. Hopefully she comes back soon because it is not easy to find a gray manatee in murky lagoon water!