Tuesday, April 20, 1999

Manatees arrive with ease

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Zoo welcomes new residents from Florida

BY JIM KNIPPENBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer

New manatee looks through the exhibit window Monday at the Cincinnati Zoo. (Michael E. Keating photo) | ZOOM |

        The Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden's two newest residents arrived with a splash early Monday afternoon.

        Douglas and Stoneman, two young manatees, are now swimming around their new digs at the zoo's $4million Manatee Springs exhibit, opening May 22.

        The journey here from Miami Seaquarium, their home since birth, was a six-hour trip that involved two cranes, two forklifts and a cargo plane. Three- year-old Douglas and Stoneman, 4, made their way fairly oblivious, nestled in huge blue boxes that were lined with foam and open at the top.

        “It was a perfect ride up,” said keeper Sylvia Espejo, one of five Seaquarium staffers on the scene. “The guys behaved just like we thought — Stoneman moved around a little, then got tired and went to sleep. Douglas slept the whole way.

        “It helped that it was a smooth ride and landing.”

        Once in Cincinnati, the manatees left the airport in an 18-wheeler that had to do some tight maneuvering to get up the narrow paths leading to the exhibit.

        Getting them into their new home was equally complicated. After a forklift unloaded them from the truck, a crane hoisted the first box into the air, then lowered it through a skylight (with no room to spare) into the new tanks. There, three Seaquarium divers waited to coax them out of their boxes.

        About 40 zoo staffers, media and construction workers cheered as Douglas, the first of the pair, slid out of his box.

        The entire unloading operation took about an hour and was “as smooth as any we've done,” said Dr. Maya Dougherty, the Seaquarium vet who flew here with them.

        If Douglas and Stoneman were surprised that their new home was almost twice as big as their Seaquarium home, they didn't show it. They began lazily swimming around the bottom of the 120,000-gallon tank the minute they were lowered in.

        Initially, they had a buoyancy problem, making them work hard to get to the surface of the water to breathe.

        “They went from straight salt water there to straight fresh water here,” Dr. Dougherty said. The adjustment to fresh water was expected to take no more than three hours.

        “Look at them, aren't they great,” said Ed Maruska, zoo director. “I think they're going to be a blockbuster for us.”

       

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