Fishing the other day @ HRBT on small aluminum johnboat... with briggs and stratton 5.5 hp motorsomething like a canoe, coming under bridge towards rocks moving against tide, and then saw a huge silvery almost white figure in the water... I was thinking "OH A BIG FISH" so we started casting at it... it got closer only to discover I was gazing upon a manatee... now I know where they got the Norfolk mermaid... say ... did sailor have a thing for fatties back then? If so, much hasn't changed.

OK, I'll bite. Didn't know the came this far up.

Yeah, there was a post a week or 10 days ago with a link to a Richmond Times Dispatch article about one sighted up the James, near richmond. Someone from the group that handles strandings (usually turtles, whales, dolphins) said several have been documented in the bay this year and confirmed the pics a deputy took whie fishing were indeed a manatee. The last manatee sighting in Richmond was 2002. It would be really cool to see one- I have never seen one boating in FL. I think they downplay sightings, particuarly like those in a confined areas like the james, so sightseers don't run over the cows with their boats trying to find them for a photo op.

I saw one in Rudee Inlet two years ago.

kind of an eerie sight if you'd ask me. im off that bridge all the time and never saw anything like it before aside from shedd's aquarium.

When I was stationed in Mayport FL, I lived out in Arlington. We saw them all the time from the dock we fished at. Very cool that they are up here. I guess I will have to pay more attention.

Here is the article from the Richmond paper about our peripatetic seagoing mammal friend(s?).

RTD on manatee sighting

The one I saw was in Lake Westley .

Some of you old timers (like me) might remember "Chessie" the manatee from 15 or 20 years back. After mutiple sightings over a couple of years they thought she was a relative of the Loch Ness Monster (Nessie), thus the name. Later she was confused with my ex and renamed "Sea Hag", but finally identified as a manatee. They put a tracking device on her and followed her progress down the intercoastal waterway and back to FLA. She came back every year for a while. Who knows why critters do what they do.