{"id":230844,"date":"2026-04-14T06:08:45","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T06:08:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/230844\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T06:08:45","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T06:08:45","slug":"eckerd-college-search-and-rescue-team-scores-a-double-two-manatee-rescues-on-the-same-day-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/230844\/","title":{"rendered":"Eckerd College Search and Rescue Team scores a double\u2014two manatee rescues on the same day – News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other members of the EC-SAR team that day were Isabella Spanos, a junior marine science<\/a> student from Bradenton, Florida; Georgia Summers, a sophomore marine science student from Orlando; and Alexandria Wolfe, a first-year marine science student from San Antonio, Texas.<\/p>\n

For nearly 15 years, EC-SAR<\/a> team members helped the FWC<\/a> locate manatees, dolphins or whales that were in distress or had died in local waters. The EC-SAR teams typically provided the FWC with detailed locations of the animals. When FWC crews arrived on scene, they captured the animals and loaded them in their boats.<\/p>\n

But last May, led by Ryan Dilkey \u201998, Associate Director of the Waterfront, and Andy Garrett \u201999, a manatee rescue coordinator for the FWC who leads the FWC\u2019s Marine Mammal Pathobiology Lab on Eckerd\u2019s campus<\/a>, the College announced an expanded collaboration<\/a> with the FWC. EC-SAR students are now trained to help capture and transfer the sick or injured animals to an FWC boat. The animals are usually transported to ZooTampa <\/a>or SeaWorld Orlando<\/a>, facilities that have marine mammal veterinary care for injured or distressed animals.<\/p>\n

EC-SAR has assisted in more than a dozen manatee rescues since May. But never two on the same day.<\/p>\n

Krista Park \u201922, coordinator of training and operations for the EC-SAR team, was the coordinator for the March 24 rescues, as well as for other manatee cases earlier in the year. She was the person who called Mason that Tuesday afternoon. \u201cAs far as I am aware we have never had a successful back-to-back capture until that week,\u201d she says. \u201cI think the only challenges were timing\u2014the students were a little late to our weekly team meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Founded in 1971, EC-SAR is the only college maritime rescue team in the country. \u201cIt\u2019s a great opportunity for the students,\u201d Krista adds. \u201cMany of them are going into the marine science field and this is a really good way to get a foot in the door.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The other members of the EC-SAR team that day were Isabella Spanos, a junior marine science student from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[103409,22624,202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-230844","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-ec-sar","9":"tag-manatees","10":"tag-st-pete","11":"tag-st-pete-headlines","12":"tag-st-pete-news","13":"tag-st-petersburg","14":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","15":"tag-st-petersburg-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230844","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=230844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}