The saga of the wayward sea cow has a happy ending.
Ilya, a gentle Florida manatee who delayed his annual fall migration back down to Florida and got trapped in a warm New Jersey creek as ocean temperatures plummeted, was captured by rescuers and flown home yesterday. He is expected to make a full recovery.
“He is safely home in Florida, and currently in a nice pool at the Miami Seaquarium,” said Charles Underwood, of the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
The 10-foot-long sea creature had been spotted two weeks ago wading in a creek near Linden, NJ, warmed by runoff from a nearby ConocoPhillips refinery, but then disappeared, leading rescuers to fear the worst.
But Ilya reappeared at the creek Tuesday, and rescuers sprang into action.
Using ConocoPhillips boats, officials with the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in New Jersey made several attempts to capture the animal in a 300-foot fishing net, but the wily creature evaded them.
After 7½ hours of trying, they snared the sea cow, loaded it onto a truck using a crane, and took it to a heated holding pool Brigantine, NJ.
“We’re very relieved,” said center co-director Bob Schoelkopf. “We spent a lot of days worrying about him.”
In all, the entire rescue operation cost $30,000, the majority of it covered by the private, nonprofit groups, Underwood said.
Ilya consumed $300 worth of lettuce as he regained his strength in a day and a half.
“All this thing did was eat,” Schoelkopf said. “But that’s a good thing.”
Veterinarians with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Miami Seaquarium determined that Ilya was in good condition and had suffered only minor “cold stress complications.”
Manatees can comfortably tolerate water temperatures as low as 68 degrees, but in his adventure up north — he had been spotted as far up as Connecticut — Ilya encountered temps in the low 50s.
Given a clean bill of health, Ilya was loaded aboard a US Coast Guard C-130 cargo plane and flown from Atlantic City to Miami.
Ilya will remain in the care of the Miami Seaquarium manatee-rehab staff until he is healthy enough to be released back into the warm waters off southeast Florida.