How do you rescue a 410-pound manatee from a Florida storm drain?

City surveyors in Melbourne Beach, Florida, heard an unusual chirping under a road on Feb. 9 while doing routine work, and thought it could be coming from rats. Instead, they discovered a 7-foot-long manatee stuck in a storm drain—setting off a complicated, hours-long effort to rescue the tired, cold, and hungry animal. 

The young manatee had likely entered the drain while seeking warmth during a recent cold snap. Once inside the pipe he couldn’t turn around, and there was very little water. 

He probably “just panicked and kept crawling forward until he hit a dead end,” says Brandi Phillips, branch director for the University of Florida Animal Technical Rescue team, who was on site during the rescue. “We're so lucky that the surveyors were able to locate him, because I don’t think anybody would have ever noticed that he had been down there.” 

Florida’s waterways are a mix of natural habitat and human-made canals, marinas and drainage systems that manatees regularly move through. While manatees have adapted to these changed environments, the waterways were never designed with large marine animals in mind.

Incidents like this highlight a broader challenge facing manatees’ long-term survival in Florida: access to safe, warm-water habitat. During winter temperature drops, manatees like this one seek out warm water. Both historically and in recent times, they have found refuge in natural springs that maintain temperatures around 72 degrees Fahrenheit, such as the popular Three Sisters Springs and Blue Spring State Park.

But many of these natural springs have stopped flowing, have been polluted, or are cut off by development, resulting in manatees getting pushed out, says Patrick Rose, executive director of the Save the Manatee Club. As climate change drives more extreme weather—including sudden cold snaps as well as sea-level rise—clashes between manatees and human infrastructure are becoming harder to avoid. And as power plants with warm-water outflows are phased out to reduce carbon emissions, Rose says, securing alternative warm-water habitats will be critical to manatee survival.

(There have never been more manatees in Florida than there are now)

How the rescue unfolded

Under normal circumstances, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) responds to reports of distressed manatees and is equipped to handle rescues, says Phillips. But storm drains and culverts, structures that channel water underground, are tight concrete spaces, and could even have hazardous air quality. Safely removing a 7-foot, 410-pound animal requires specialized equipment, careful coordination and constant monitoring to prevent further injury to the manatee or responders. 

Only specially trained responders are allowed inside, which complicated FWC’s rescue effort. 

In addition, the manatee had likely been in shallow, cold water for an extended period of time, so responders had to move efficiently while minimizing stress on an already compromised animal.

By chance, Philips’ team was nearby conducting a large-animal rescue training—typically focused on livestock—with the Brevard County fire department. The fire department got the call at 2:30 p.m. from FWC to join the scene. By the time they arrived at the site about a half hour later, a helicopter was circling overhead. “It’s not every day that you find a manatee and a storm drain. So it definitely became very much a big concern for the public pretty quickly,” says Phillips. 

It was clear that the only way to free the manatee was vertically, says Phillips. That necessitated cutting through concrete, which required waiting a few hours to secure permission from the government.

In the meantime, crews installed ventilation fans to move fresh air into the space. Using a system of ropes, a fireman descended, equipped with respiratory protection and continuous air quality monitoring. He then placed a large plastic sheet on the manatee to protect him from any falling debris. 

Once approvals were secured, Brevard County Public Works removed more than 10,000 pounds of concrete to open the space.

“The manatee was alert and moving at the time of rescue, which was encouraging,” says Blake Faucett, marine mammal biologist with FWC and the onsite lead for the manatee rescue. “However, he was underweight and had visible wounds. Responders worked carefully to minimize stress and handle him as gently and efficiently as possible.” 

The crew proceeded to the drain pipe to get the manatee onto a slip to then hoist him out, which a private towing company provided free of charge. Once out, he was loaded onto a truck to be transported for care at SeaWorld, authorized to care for manatees under the statewide Manatee Rescue & Rehabilitation Partnership. As of 2025, SeaWorld has rescued over 1,000 manatees since the inception of the program in the 1970s. 

“The moment the manatee was successfully removed from the culvert was significant. After hours of coordination and effort, seeing him safely secured and transported for care was both a relief and a powerful reminder of what partnership and preparation can accomplish,” says Faucett. 

“It did take a village to save this manatee,” says Phillips. 

(Florida’s beloved manatees are dying in alarming numbers again. Here’s why.)

Treating injuries

The male manatee arrived at SeaWorld around 11:00 p.m. the same day. Brant Gabriel, curator of rescue operations, was waiting for him along with a team of four people he called to wake up and join him. The team’s priority was to get the manatee hydrated and in the medical pool to warm up, says Gabriel. 

The next day, the staff were pleased to see that he was eating almost right away. “It was a really good sign for the team to see what he went through in that pipe and see the resilience of this guy the next day. He just started chowing down on lettuce,” says Gabriel. This was probably the manatee's first winter alone without his mom, notes Gabriel, and he’s probably close to 2 years old. 

The care team treated the cuts and scrapes on his belly and underside and collected blood samples, which indicated an infection—likely from the wounds. He is now receiving topical ointment to help the injuries heal, along with a course of antibiotics. Encouragingly, after 48 hours he was moved to a deeper pool with other manatees in care.

Over the next couple of weeks SeaWorld will continue to monitor those wounds, make sure he’s gaining weight, and check his blood. The theme park will coordinate with FWC to coordinate a release. Gabriel anticipates the manatee will have a relatively short stay at Sea World.  “We deal with many injuries that are life threatening and some that take a very long time to heal,” he says. “We take a lot of joy in seeing one that might be a quick turnaround getting it back out to its natural habitat.”

Urban waterways and climate change

While incidents of manatees getting stuck are rare, they are not new.

In 2015, for instance, during a cold snap in late February, 19 manatees got stuck in a storm drain in Satellite Beach, Florida. While those animals were all rescued, Rose says that “sadly, sometimes the only way you know what happened is after a big rain when bones or a carcass get flushed out.” 

To reduce the risk of more manatees getting stuck, FWC will work with the City of Melbourne Beach to recommend the installation of grates and bars on the culvert where Melbourne Beach manatee likely entered, as well as pipes and storm drains found within the city, says Kelly Richmond, a spokesperson with FWC.    

Since the 1970s, Rose says that dozens of manatees have died from getting trapped.

But the larger issue, says Rose, is how manatees will fare as the effects of climate change intensify.

During the winter months manatees need access to water that is warmer than 68 degrees Fahrenheit to survive prolonged cold weather and “about 60 percent of manatees presently depend on artificial warm water from industrial sources. Those really all need to go away in the future if we’re going to deal with climate change,” he says. 

Richmond says that FWC and the national U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are actively implementing a statewide plan to protect warm spots manatees rely on, including restoring and improving key sites.          

For instance, for decades, manatees relied on passive warm-water flows in the Port of the Islands canal in Southwest Florida. But changes to Everglades water management began eliminating those sources, says Rose. To reduce the risk to manatees that had become dependent on them, managers launched an initial experiment by creating deep, man-made pockets along the canal that retain heat longer—an early effort to replace lost natural warm-water habitat without using artificial heating. 

“The wonderful thing about working to save manatees is that you have to save their aquatic ecosystems in the process,” says Rose. “And if we do that, we save them for everything else.”