4 Manatees Return To Tampa Bay Waters

APOLLO BEACH, FL — Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo has announced that four endangered manatees in its care will return to the wild Thursday morning.

The first two creatures will be released from TECO’s Manatee Viewing Center, 6990 Dickman Road in Apollo Beach, around 11:30 a.m. The second pair is scheduled for release around 12:30 p.m. All four will be released into the power station’s discharge canal, which is a designated manatee sanctuary.

The four manatees are all cold stress survivors brought to the zoo’s David A. Straz Jr. Manatee Hospital last winter. They are:

• Sota, rescued on Dec. 5, 2014, from Phillippi Creek in Sarasota
• Turtlepie, rescued on Jan. 16, 2015, from Loggerhead in St. Petersburg
• Snowpea, rescued on Jan. 29, 2015, from the 77th canal in St. Petersburg
• Whit, rescued on March 3, 2015, from Whittaker Bayou in Sarasota

The Manatee Viewing Center is open Nov. 1 through April 15 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. It does close down for Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Easter. There is no charge to view the manatees in their natural habitat. To learn more about the Manatee Viewing Center, check out this story.

Photo of Snowpea by David Parkinson of Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo