Manatee Lumbers North Again

Chessie, the manatee who made headlines in 1995 by swimming all the way to Rhode Island, has been visiting the north again.

U.S. Geological Survey scientists confirmed Tuesday that a manatee sighted three weeks ago at Great Bridge, Va., was Chessie.

He was seen inside a lock along the Intercoastal Waterway, patiently waiting for the lock to fill so he could continue his trip south, the researchers said.

“Manatees know about negotiating locks,” said Jim Reid, a manatee expert at the agency’s Florida Caribbean Science Center in Gainesville, Fla. “Manatees have gotten used to being around people and so have adapted to human-created habitats.”

While he was in the lock, workers there called the Virginia Marine Science Museum, which sent over a team of scientists to study and photograph the animal.

Comparison of the pictures with those taken in 1994 and ’95 show the same pattern of scars, confirming that Chessie has indeed made another trip north.

Chessie first became famous in 1994 when he made it into Chesapeake Bay. When the weather turned cold in October, he was captured by the National Aquarium and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and returned by a Coast Guard plane to Florida.