High summer. Sarasota, western Florida, and the bridges linking the Keys (off-shore islands) hum with traffic. Boutiques throng with tourists, construction cranes loom high, the beaches are peppered with sunbathers courting melanoma and the surface of the Gulf of Mexico is torn by Jet-skis.

Manatees, popularly known as sea cows, are like dugongs, but larger.

It is the last place, frankly, that one would expect to encounter manatees.