Hundreds of manatees were \u201cringing in the new year\u201d in the warm waters of a wildlife refuge on Florida\u2019s western coast, conservationists said.<\/p>\n
This footage from the Southwest Florida Water Management District posted on December 31 shows manatees congregated at Three Sisters Springs, a wildlife refuge in Crystal River where the waters \u201cremain at a constant 72 degrees year-round,\u201d according to<\/a> the agency.<\/p>\n The marine mammals spend each winter in the balmy spot, then return to the Gulf around April.<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Southwest Florida Water Management District recently restored<\/a> the shoreline around Three Sisters Springs, which it said<\/a> \u201cwill help prevent future erosion,\u201d improve water quality, and make the area safer for visitors. Credit: Southwest Florida Water Management District via Storyful<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hundreds of manatees were \u201cringing in the new year\u201d in the warm waters of a wildlife refuge on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[53441,28,30,29,36010,53440,16194],"class_list":["post-102445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-conservationists","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-southwest-florida-water-management-district","tag-three-sisters-springs","tag-wildlife-refuge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}