A young manatee named Pilo rests placidly on the deck of a research ship as scientists give him a physical on Florida's Crystal River in November 2006.
The five-year-old male was captured during the first of three planned expeditions to the northwest Florida river, where manatees migrate every fall to take advantage of the warm, spring-fed waters.
The expeditions, which resumed this month, will amount to one of the most comprehensive studies yet done of Florida manatees in the wild.
During Pilo's half-hour-long checkup, biologists collected all manner of data from their peaceful patient—from pulse readings taken with a portable heart monitor to urine caught in a Frisbee placed under his genitals.
Pilo weighed in at 916 pounds (415 kilograms) and measured 9 feet (280 centimeters) long. The scientists gave him a clean bill of health.
"I'd give him a [rating of] perfectly normal, excellent condition," said Robert Bonde, a marine biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) who coordinated the expedition.
"He's a great-looking manatee."
A team of biologists wrestles a young male manatee onto a muddy beach along Florida's Crystal River in November 2006.
The scientists were conducting the first of three planned expeditions to study the manatees that migrate to the river every autumn.
"This is a really important study," said Nicole Adimey (pictured left, in blue cap), a marine biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Partly at issue, she explained, is a mysterious outbreak among Crystal River manatees of a virus that had previously been found only in captive animals.
Though the virus is rarely harmful, little is known about where it originated, how many wild manatees have it, and what's causing the current outbreak, which can cause skin lesions and other symptoms.
"Is there some kind of environmental condition here? What are the factors that cause outbreaks in the wild?" Adimey said.
"It's a big management question for [us]."
A dozen hands tend to an unnamed wild manatee captured on Florida's Crystal River in November 2006.
More than 40 scientists from ten state, federal, and nonprofit agencies took part in the expedition to study the manatees that converge on the river in the fall and winter.
USGS biologist Robert Bonde explained that animals like this male provide a rare opportunity to collect blood and other samples from wild manatees that biologists could otherwise get only from rescued animals in captivity.
"[These scientists] are very anxious to get as much information as they can to supplement what they're learning in clinics and hospitals about manatees [with] what they can get from a natural population," he said.
A wild manatee is released back into Florida's Crystal River after being captured for a spot checkup in November 2006.
Many of the 400-plus manatees that come to Crystal River in the fall to bask in the warm waters continue up Florida's Gulf Coast to the Suwannee River, scientists say.
The animals often congregate in the summer at the mouth of the Suwannee, where they forage on large beds of sea grass (see an interactive map of the Suwannee River).
But more and more Florida manatees are wintering in the Suwannee too, because it, like the Crystal, is fed by warm springs that provide comfortable refuge from the chilly Gulf waters.
According to the USGS's Bonde, in a few years the Suwannee could host a manatee population as big and as burgeoning as the one in the Crystal River.
"It's only recently [that] they're starting to use those springs [in the Suwannee]," he said.
"And they're going to build a little population [there], and it's going to grow, if we allow it to grow and we keep giving them … the things they need, like protecting the habitat."
Reference:nationalgeographic
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