Frisky Manatees

This evening at our regular Monday Night Meetup, we were treated to some very frisky Manatees. We were at the Safety Harbor Marina in Safety Harbor, FL and these Manatees were all over the place. We watched them playing or making love near the pier, they were at the docks there was some most everywhere we pointed our cameras.

It's not hard to figure out what's going on with these two. Manatees are so cute to watch. They seem to move in slow motion and they twirl and turn throughout the water. They are huge animals, weighing in about 1500-1800 lbs. and are about 10-12 feet long. There are only about 3,000 in Florida and are considered endangered. Manatees live to be around 50-60 years old in the wild. They are herbivores, which means they are vegetarians. They live on sea grasses and such. They have no known natural predators. The biggest danger to them is humans with their motor boats. Most Manatees have deep scars on their backs from getting injured from the propeller blades on boats. We need to be more careful and look out for these gentle giants in the water.

About the photograph; this was photographed around 5:00 pm while the sun was still pretty harsh. I overexposed this shot at 1 2/3 stops and in some areas the shadows are still blocked. I was shooting directly into the sun. I probably could've opened up 2 stops, but I'm not sure how much that would have helped. In times like this, it is better to shoot manual and watch the histogram closely. In tonight's case, I couldn't see the histogram very well and had to guess at the exposure.