Along with our entertainment permit came a license to rescue and rehabilitate manatees. This is an important license which enables us to rescue injured manatees, nurse them back to heath and display them in this pool. Some of our rescued manatee have been confined to this display case for decades. They are part of our family as well.

While we have released a few of our rescued Manatees with sucess including Collista and her calf, I can tell you that there is only one reason. They're a liability. Manatees don't do tricks, unlike our Sea Lions, Dolphins, and orcas who can be programmed to perform. There's no profit in Manatees, bottom line. So here at the Seaquarium we release them; makes for good press.

This is the upper deck of our manatee resort. It's much smaller than it appears I assure you. Interesting fact: This is where we kept our first Orca Hugo. Pretty Funny huh? He was 20 feet long and weighed 6000 pounds. When trainers used to feed Hugo his tail would be lying on the bottom and his head was completely out of the water. A pretty funny site: a whale in a teacup.

©Dolphin Project

Hugo died in 1980. He suffered a brain aneurysm from slamming his head into the walls one too many times. Poor Hugo. He was here for around 10 years before he died. But we made a pretty penny exploiting him. And the Seaquarium was the first on the east coast to put an orca in a tank.

Jacques Cousteau once said, "There is as much educational benefit in studying dolphins in captivity as there would be in studying human beings by only observing prisoners in solitary confinement."