THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 12, 1995 TAG: 9507120034
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LAWRENCE MADDRY
LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
CHESSIE IS back.
Yep, the 110-foot-long manatee, weighing 1,400 pounds, was swimming in the inland waterway when Joan O'Conner spotted him on July 3 while out for an early evening cruise on her Sea Doo wet bike.
``I thought it was a whale at first,'' O'Conner said. She picked up the cellular phone and called her husband at the Centerville Turnpike Marina, which they own.
Listening to her description on the phone, her husband told her she was following a manatee. Manatees are the warm water creatures that look like the shmoos drawn by cartoonist Al Capp many years ago.
``I followed him for about five miles and turned back because it was getting dark,'' O'Conner said. ``He was just lumbering along, headed north.''
A couple of hours later, at about 10 p.m., Lloyd Dempsey was in a chamber of the Great Bridge Locks aboard his boat, the Sammy-D, and saw Chessie.
``I shone a spotlight on the manatee,'' he said. ``And got pictures of it. It looked like a rhino in the water. And had a very pink mouth.''
Lockmaster George Brasil reported the manatee had the number 46 on its back, a permanent marking imprinted on its skin by marine biologists.
The number enabled personnel at the Virginia Marine Science Museum to determine it was Chessie, a manatee rescued from the cold waters of the Chester River in Maryland last October. Chessie had swum into Chesapeake Bay and showed no interest in heading south toward warmer water. Manatees cannot live long in water colder than 65 degrees, so the manatee was taken to the National Aquarium in Baltimore.
A few days later, Chessie was flown by an Elizabeth City-based Coast Guard crew to Florida and later released.
The manatee is an endangered species. About 1,800 of the ``sea cows'' are believed to be in the United States. Most of them live in Florida.
A few manatee sightings have been made in Hampton Roads each year since 1992. A trout fisherman hooked and released an 800-pound manatee he caught at Lynnhaven Inlet in 1992.
Following his plane trip to Florida, Chessie was released after being fitted with three radio transmitters housed in a small buoy attached to a belt on the base of his tail.
Biologists have been tracking his movements since. Chessie now holds the distinction of being the only tagged manatee to have traveled so far north equipped with a transmitter.
Former Norfolkian Jim Reid, a biologist with the National Biological Service in Gainsville, Fla., said Chessie has been traveling about 30 miles a day since beginning his northern odyssey in the North Banana River near Brevard, Fla., in early June.
``He hasn't taken a day off since starting north,'' Reid said. ``In Florida he eats subtropical and tropical sea grasses. But up in your region, he has probably been feeding on spartina and cord grass.''
Chessie traveled from Jacksonville, Fla., to Charleston, S.C., in about a week. He entered Pamlico Sound in North Carolina in late June.
Reid believes Chessie will return to the Chester River in Maryland before long. And this time, if he hangs around for cold weather, scientists may track him with the transmitter instead of rescuing him.
Since they'll know exactly where he is at all times, a rescue, if necessary, will be much easier. Reid says it may be that Chessie will head south later in the year than is now believed to be normal.
It may be, Reid said, that manatees have been passing in and out of Virginia waters for centuries without notice. He said Chessie, towing a transmitter, could be headed back our way sometime in October. by CNB