A rare visitor from the south has a lot of people talking in Belmar this week after a manatee took up residence in the Shark River.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was a Saturday morning Harry Conover and his dad won\u2019t soon forget as they watched in disbelief at a manatee silently gliding through the lagoon near Shark River Inlet in Belmar.<\/p>\n
“I went out on Shark River to get bait with my dad and low and behold, we come across a 12-foot manatee. I said to my dad ‘There’s a manatee.’ He said, ‘No way!’ and I said ‘Look!’ and there it was, going along the bulkhead, along the docks, and it was just absolutely incredible,” said Harry Conover. <\/p>\n
They were the first to report the sighting to the Marine Mammal Stranding Center. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Hours later, it was at the dock next to Josh Vallario\u2019s backyard.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw this brown thing in the water and I thought it was a garbage can from one of the neighbors that blew in,\u201d said Vallario. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the coolest thing we\u2019ve ever seen. You can\u2019t miss a manatee. They are the gentle cows of the ocean. Just gentle, giant creatures,\u201d Vallario said. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Keeping an eye on this manatee are the experts from the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not unheard of anymore. These guys do make their way up north,\u201d said Jay Pagel, the stranding coordinator at the center. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIn our history, we\u2019ve physically handled only five of these animals, and we\u2019ve been doing this since the late 70s,\u201d he said. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Because of the creature\u2019s size and slow movement, one of the leading causes of deaths in the wild is by boat strikes. With that, the center wants boaters to stay alert in the area.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBiggest thing they can do is just give it plenty of room, plenty of space, don\u2019t feed it, water it and if you\u2019re on a boat just basically slow down,\u201d said Pagel. \u00a0<\/p>\n
For now, the center will continue to monitor the manatee. If it sticks around as the water cools, they may send a relocation team. The hope is the manatee will find its way back out the inlet and hang a hard right in the ocean, south\u00a0to Florida.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I built the house, I always told the kids we would see a lot of cool wildlife in the backyard,\u201d said Vallario. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Now the Vallario family\u00a0can add manatees to their growing list of backyard sightings.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
If you happen to see the manatee, the Marine Mammal Stranding Center wants people to take a photo of it and contact them right away with the location. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A rare visitor from the south has a lot of people talking in Belmar this week after a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[90380,22746,79,201],"class_list":["post-145800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-belmar","tag-manatee","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}