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FORT MYERS, Fla. – An injured manatee <\/a>and her calf are recovering after authorities on a boat rescued them from the Orange River near Fort Myers on Thursday.<\/p>\n What we know:<\/p>\n The Lee County Sheriff’s Office said its Marine Unit, Advanced Technology Support Unit, drone pilots and the Florida <\/a>Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission helped in saving the pair after the mother was found hurt in the water and in need of medical attention.<\/p>\n READ: Missing Florida man found stuck in mud without food or water for days: PFD<\/a><\/p>\n Video shows authorities pulling the frantic manatees safely onto the boat in netting before taking them to shore.<\/p>\n Courtesy: Lee County Sheriff’s Office <\/p>\n Both animals will be taken to ZooTampa <\/a>for evaluation and medical care.<\/p>\n What we don’t know:<\/p>\n LCSO did not say the extent of the mother\u2019s injuries.<\/p>\n By the numbers:<\/p>\n As of Feb. 20, there have been 85 manatee deaths across Florida in 2026, according to the FWC. Last year reportedly saw a total of 632 manatee deaths.<\/p>\n Dig deeper:<\/p>\n Earlier this month, the FWC began investigating a spike in manatee deaths, specifically in Lee County, where officials say 25 were found dead within a week.<\/p>\n READ: FWC investigating spike in manatee deaths over the past week<\/a><\/p>\n The FWC believes these manatee deaths could be from several factors: cold stress, a lack of seagrass and polluted waterways.<\/p>\n The Source: Information for this story was provided by the Lee County Sheriff’s Office and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.<\/p>\n Florida<\/a>Manatees<\/a>ZooTampa<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT MYERS, Fla. – An injured manatee and her calf are recovering after authorities on a boat rescued…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[47,28,30,29,22624,115,554,628,14992,1680],"class_list":{"0":"post-170487","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-fl","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-florida-headlines","11":"tag-florida-news","12":"tag-manatees","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-wild-nature","17":"tag-zootampa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170487","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=170487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/vlcsnap-2026-02-26-14h21m02s163.png\")
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