The last confirmed manatee sighting in Cape Cod in Sept. 2016, when a pregnant manatee was rescued off Washburn Island.
Almost 10 years after it was last reported, a manatee was spotted swimming in a Cape Cod inlet on July 26. Joanne Rathe/The Boston Globe
A manatee was reportedly spotted swimming in a Cape Cod inlet on July 26, nearly 10 years after the last time the animal was seen in the area.
Stevie Petrucci glimpsed the large mammal swimming near Popponesset Bay while walking down the dock of his home in Mashpee, the Cape Cod Times reported.
“I just noticed something very weird and strange-looking that I’d never really seen before, so I walked over. It took my brain, like, three seconds to realize what it was,” Petrucci told the Cape Cod Times. “I was like, ‘Holy crap. It’s a manatee. What are you doing up here?’”
Petrucci’s father, Stephen, told the Cape Cod Times it was his first time seeing a manatee in his 24 years of living on the Cape.
Knowing the manatees prefer warm water — they like it to be above 68 degrees — Stephen Petrucci was taken aback by seeing one.
“I knew exactly what it was as soon as I saw it,” he told the Times.
In warm months, some Florida manatees swim up the coast, “with a few animals traveling as far north as Massachusetts,” Florida Fish and Waterlife Conservation Commission wrote on its website.
The last confirmed manatee sighting in Cape Cod in Sept. 2016, when a pregnant manatee was rescued off Washburn Island.
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