BRUNSWICK – A manatee is swimming free again thanks to a fishing guide who reported the animal tangled in crab trap lines and the team of Georgia wildlife experts that rallied to rescue it. The drama played out over two days last week on the Mackay and Hampton rivers off St. Simons Island and Brunswick. Though often unnoticed in turbid coastal waters, Florida manatees are 1,000-pound-plus, federally protected marine mammals that migrate from Florida into Georgia and the Carolinas each spring into early fall to feed on abundant marsh plants and algae. But the call and photographs from St. Simons’ Capt. Davis Galland on July 29 revealed a rarity: the first documented entanglement of a manatee in Georgia. The adult female had the line and buoy from a commercial crab pot wrapped tightly around her body, just behind the head and encircling her right pectoral flipper, said senior wildlife biologist Jessica Thompson, who leads the Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ Marine Mammal Program. DNR officials responded quickly, attaching a satellite tracking tag and cutting away the anchoring crab trap before a storm chased the crew and Galland, who stayed to see if help was needed, off the water. The next day, a three-boat, multi-state group including DNR, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Clearwater Marine Aquarium Research Institute, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Savannah State University Dolphin Sciences Lab managed to completely free the…
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