May 6, 2011
Joey LaMountain, a middle school student in Cape Coral, Florida, was in his kayak in the Orange River when he saw something unusual - a manatee with a crab trap attached to its right flipper. "Whenever it’d show up for air, we saw the buoy come up too," he said.
The quick thinking 12-year-old, whose mom is a volunteer at Manatee Park, grabbed his cell phone called Florida Fish & Wildlife Commission’s emergency hotline. Then he waited for divers and directed them to her exact location.
This week the manatee, now nicknamed Tang-Lee was set free - fully recovered. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission said that the middle schooler’s quick thinking was particularly important because the state has had a record 218 manatee deaths statewide after last January’s cold snap.
"It feels really, really good," Joey said.
Photo courtesy WBIR.com
Posted by: Seymour Simon
