Sunday, April 18, 1999

Zoo hopes Miami manatees make a splash

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BY JIM KNIPPENBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Stoneman and Douglas swim in the Miami Seaquarium. (Tony Jones photo) | ZOOM |

        MIAMI — Douglas is shy but too curious not to investigate the four visitors hanging over the edge of his tank, watching him and two other manatees swim in lazy circles. He takes his time getting to us, then bobs slightly out of the water and snorts.

        Right away this question pops up: This is the face the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden thinks will launch thousands of visitors?

        This face? With its nostrils the size of half dollars and flat, fleshy snout? This face? With its thick, uneven whiskers sticking out in a dozen directions? This face? With its goofy, toothless grin?

        Yep. For the past decade people have been drawn to Florida to swim with or view these gentle creatures Floridians call “sea cows.”

        The zoo is borrowing two male manatees (Douglas and Stoneman) on an open-ended loan for its Manatee Springs exhibit. It opens May 22 but the pair arrives Monday from Miami Seaquarium.

        The oceanic theme park has specialized in rescuing injured manatees and rehabilitating them since the 1950s. They return as many manatees to the wild as they can and provide the rest with a home for life.

        It's the first time the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife has OK'd manatee exhibits outside Florida. The Columbus Zoo will get four manatees in May. Sea World of California (San Diego) already has five. The loans are part of a program to make room in Florida facilities for more manatees.

        Douglas and Stoneman's new home is a $4 million building. It has a glass roof and enough tropical plants to make it look like a giant terrarium. The centerpiece is the manatees' 120,000-gallon, glass-fronted tank.

        Zoo marketing director Donna Oehler projects the manatees will increase attendance by 8 percent (53,000 people) during the exhibit's four months alone.

        Her optimism may be well founded. “There's no time of the day that you can come up here to see these manatees and find no one else here,” says Toby Ross, Seaquarium's marketing director. “Other than the shows, they've been our biggest draw for years.”

       

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