A close call with an unexpected monster

I stood looking at my watch and thought "6 am is early. Too early for most things." But there I was standing in the bait shop, waiting to get into my group. It was so cold that my jaw would not stop clanking together and my toes were tingling, but hey its usually cold in the beginning of January on the water.

My best friend, Kelli, flew in from Denver to spend the remainder of winter break with me. I picked her up at the airport Friday night. We drove up to Crystal Springs, Florida and check into our hotel. The local seen here is pretty minimal and not much to do, to say the least, so we went to a classy spot for dinner, the Denny's down the street. It actually turned out to be the hot spot of the town. Imagine our luck. We returned to the room an hour later and crashed preparing for the next morning.

The dive instructed starts running over the rules. Obviously, as I can tell from what she describes, there have been some interesting accidents on these waters. She proceeds to explain the route each group will take and then directs masses toward their respective boats.

I was fairly certain, I had never been more cold. I stepped on to a clumsy boat with the rest of the pack and there we waited and waited and waited. I was very nervous as I had never been swimming with manatees before, becuase lets face it if they sit on you, your pretty much fish food.

The boat took us out a couple miles down Crystal River. It is almost like a waiting game. That early in the morning, manatees are still sleeping, especially in cold waters. We motored around for an hour until we came upon two of the mammals, who just happened to be awake and big surprise they were eating

Now I had to get into the water, and there is one thing I do not like, cold, dark, murky water. We zipped up our wet suits and filed toward the front of the boat. I waited and watched as the instructed approached the first manatee to see if they were playful or more into their food. Turns out, we were okay to enter. I again watched as the first few people entered the water. Seeing that everything was a 'go', Kelli and I decided to enter as well. Which was the biggest mistake we had ever made.

These playful manatee were not just any manatees, they were the rare and dangerous killer manatees, which we soon were about to find out. They were responsible for hundreds of injuries and even a couple of deaths over the years. As me and Kelli got in the water, they began to act different than other sea cows and began to move very quickly in the water like they were in preditory mode. I felt very uncomfortable and looked at Kelli and we decided to get back in the boat. We watched as the manatees began to lose interest in their food and began to attack the others in the water. Now since manatee don't have any teeth, they usually gum their victims till they are soft enough to swallow whole. I saw the instructor who was knee deep in a manatee's mouth and was calling for help. We threw her a line and rescued her from one of the killers. We than began to help others from the grips of these vicious monsters who had one thing on their mind and that was the taste of wet suites. We safely got everyone on board and examined everyone. There were minor gumming injuries but nothing serious. We looked at each other and said "WOW, that was close" then we drove off thankful to be alive.