The ones in the special pools are there because they are sick or injured or need special care. Sea World is a special place to have fun and visit the animals but it is also place where scientists can study and learn about the animals. And they try to save the injured and sick animals by taking very good care of them.

One of the manatees behind the scenes in a special pool is named Snorkel. Snorkel has a large piece of wetsuit material covering his back. Snorkel has a collapsed lung and the wetsuit material helps him float up to take a breath. He also has some scars on his back from being hit by a boat. The doctors at Sea World are treating his wounds.

We saw another manatee who was missing a flipper. The flipper got caught in a rope from a crab pot. ( A crab pot looks like a big square basket. It is a trap used for catching crabs. The fishermen put it on the bottom of the sea in shallow water. They attach a rope to it with a float at the top so that they can come back and find it again.) The rope cut off the circulation and the flipper was injured so much that it fell off. Now that manatee is getting medical attention at Sea World.

The cutest manatee I have ever seen is at Sea World. Dr. Odell and his friends at Sea World are taking care of an adorable baby manatee named Pistachio. This little manaee was rescued when he was 1 week old. Somehow he was separated from his mother. Fortunately someone called Sea World and they rushed to pick him up.

Dr. Odell doesn't know how it happened but he guesses that possibly a male manatee got between the mother and Pistachio and he couldn't find his mother again.

Pistachio is now 3 months old and he weighs about 60 or 70 pounds. He lives in a large round swimming pool all by himself. It would be OK to have other calves in there with him, but right now they don't have any others.

We watched him swim around. He liked the sunny side better than the shady side except when people came to see him. A group of schoolchildren came to the shady side and he swam over to them and stayed there the whole time they were there.

We watched him try to eat the lettuce in the pool. Dr. Odell says they give him lettuce and he is just learning to eat it. But since he is a baby, he still loves his bottle!

One of the Sea World caretakeers, Wayne Grinder came to give Pistachio his bottle. Five times a day Pistachio has his bottle. It is not really milk. It is actually puppy formula! Mr. Grinder adds water, salad oil, and vitamins to the formula to make it into manatee formula.

Wayne and I had an exciting day at Sea World with Dr. Dan Odell. I am so happy that the dedicated people at Sea World are not only taking care of the manatees but they are also educating all the visitors about manatees so that future generations will have the manatees to see and enjoy, too.

Did you know that Sea World gets very little money from the government to take care of the injured manatees? If it wasn't for all the visitors who buy the tickets to Sea World, they wouldn't have enough money to do all the wonderful things they are doing. They wouldn't be able to rescue and take care of manatees like Snorkel and Pistachio if it wasn't for people buying tickets to Sea World. So everyone who visits Sea World is helping in a very big way to save the manatees and all the other animals in the park.

I hope all of you have a chance very soon to visit one of the Sea World parks. It will be a day you will never forget.