Havre de Grace Manatee

The Baltimore Sun is reporting that a manatee has been sighted in the northern reaches of the Chesapeake Bay near Havre de Grace. USGS biologists have identified it as a male they have named Ilya, last seen in the Miami area in 2006.

One of Florida's endangered manatees paid a social call on Havre de Grace over the weekend, swimming close enough to the dock to be filmed and even touched, officials at the National Aquarium said yesterday.

Video shot by a town police officer of the visiting marine mammal was clear enough to allow federal biologists in Florida to identify the manatee as a teen-ager named Ilya, last sighted near Miami three years ago, said Jennifer Dittmar, coordinator of the Baltimore aquarium's marine animal rescue program.

Read the entire story at the Baltimore Sun.