Travel: Man at ease with the manatees: They can't do tricks like dolphins, but Florida's threatened marine animals had a surprising charm for Frank Barrett and his family

'You wanna take the Manatee Awareness Course as well?' The girl behind the counter of the dive shop stopped chewing gum for a moment and let her index finger hover expectantly over a key on the cash register. What is it exactly, I asked.

'You watch a 45-minute video about the manatees - it's an extra 20 bucks. You get a certificate. You wanna take it? Or do you just wanna swim with the manatees without the course?'

I just wanted to swim with the manatees. Without the course.

'You ever swum with the manatees before?'

No, I said.

'You'll like them; they're kinda neat.'

Having been almost wholly indifferent to the fate of these curious creatures for hundreds of years, Florida has suddenly taken a late fancy to them. This fond interest has certainly not been inspired by the manatee's stunning good looks or sparkling personality: in appearance it has the face of a particularly stupid labrador dog and the bulging shapeless body mass of a giant slug.

You might have thought that it was an unappealing relative of the walrus or a dull second cousin to the seal - but you would be wrong. The manatee is the evolutionary result of some four-footed creature - actually a relative of the elephant - which some 60 million years ago decided that it had had enough of trying to eke out a life on the land and plodded back to the sea.

The manatee is not unique to Florida: it is found in West Africa and the Amazon and is also closely related to the Australian dugong. But it is in Florida that the manatee has sprung to prominence. It is an animal grotesque, something of a circus freak. Compared with the perky top-of-the- form intelligence of the dolphin, the manatee resides with the persistent under-achievers in the marine animal group. You would be wasting your time trying to teach one to knock a beach ball through a hoop. You would never succeed in getting it to turn somersaults or to leap for fish (this would be a special waste of time, since manatees are vegetarians).

The manatee's greatest trick is that as a species, against all odds, it has clung tenaciously to life for so long. But perhaps not for much longer: existence seems to be reaching an end.

People no longer kill the manatee deliberately; hunting them was made illegal at the end of the last century. But there are many more ways of killing a manatee than bonking it over the head. You can poison its waters with industrial chemicals and herbicides; you can turn its habitat into a condominium development; or you can leave old fishing line around for it to choke on. Florida has done all this - and worse.

Manatees look ungainly - more than 13ft long and weighing up to more than one and a half tons - but they can move surprisingly quickly when they wish. Unfortunately they do not move as quickly as the speedboats with which they regularly collide in the shallow coastal waterways off the coast of Florida, usually with fatal consequences.

Simply put, the manatee's problem is that it is effectively allergic to the 20th century. As Florida's human population increases by around 1,000 new residents a day (and with the majority choosing to live near the sea), the manatee's living space is being whittled away.

Nobody knows for certain how many manatees there are in Florida because they have never been properly counted, but the best guess puts the total at about 1,200. But while conservation areas and sanctuaries have helped to stabilise the population, there are ominous signs for the future: the birth rate is declining and each year there are more manatee deaths than births. It may not be long before the Florida manatee is as dead as the dodo.

The Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa has one of Florida's four Manatee Hospitals where sick and injured animals are treated. (A 'hospital' suggests manatees in pyjamas tucked up in bed next to a bowl of fruit, a bottle of Lucozade and a clutter of Get Well cards). Recuperated manatees are on display in a 'Manatee Village'. You can watch their underwater existence through large windows while a taped commentary provides information and background.

'The name 'manatee' comes from Greek mythology, the name given to sea nymphs who were said to have lured mariners on to rocks with their beautiful songs. Christopher Columbus sighted manatees on his voyage to the New World: his sailors returned with stories of mermaids. The manatee is in the Sirenia family; 'siren' is another name for mermaid,' the commentary told us.

You would have to be terminally confused or extremely short- sighted to mistake a manatee for a desirable sea nymph, but presumably long, lonely days at sea used to do strange things to a man.

'But now the manatee faces extinction . . .' intoned the sonorous voice.

'Don't look so extinct to me,' said one man to his wife.

'They're so ugly,' said a girl: 'Oh God, I'm grossing out here.'

The commentary went on: 'The manatee is a relative of the elephant and is only mildly social . . .'

The mildly social manatees in their giant fish tank studiously ignored all the attention. One slept on his back on the bottom of the pool while another munched on, unconcerned, steadily devouring several hundredweight of non- descript vegetable matter.

'They eat salad]' cried a boy in horror: 'They're vegetarians]'

'I kinda thought they were insects,' said his friend: 'You know . . . praying manatees.'

'That's praying mantises, butthead.'

The manatee asleep at the bottom of the pool turned over and carried on dozing.

We gathered for our Swim with the Manatees at 8.30am. We were seven altogether: the Barrett family, a volunteer fireperson from Virginia and an ex-figure skater and her 21- year-old son from Buffalo. The figure skater had done the trip before. 'I tell you, you get so cold out there. But then I'm probably a survivor of the desert. I'm gonna go buy potato chips and pop - we'll need it. In the Greek myths there's always someone like me - a rescuer goddess.'

The Rescuer Goddess popped across to the 7-Eleven store and returned with an armful of crisps and Diet Sprite. 'We're gonna need this fuel, I tell ya.'

Bob was in charge. He gave us a quick list of do's and don'ts. 'You can put your hand out to the manatees, but you can't chase 'em; that constitutes harassment and that's a felony. You can be fined up to dollars 25,000 for harassing a manatee. If you wanna touch 'em, touch 'em with one hand; if you rub 'em they sometimes roll over. They like being rubbed. You can't hold on to their flippers and you can't hold on to their tails - this also constitutes a felony.'

Bob slowly nosed the pontoon boat from the deck out into the Crystal River towards the manatee sanctuaries. 'Do any of you read the National Enquirer?' The National Enquirer is America's most widely read paper, a tabloid sold in supermarkets, which devotes itself to tales of the extraordinary, of the 'I licked an Elvis stamp and cured my throat cancer' variety. 'The Enquirer had a story a few months ago about an 800lb manatee that dragged a man to the bottom of the water and had his way with him, if you know what I mean. I promise you, that ain't gonna happen to you today. The guy who wrote that article is the same one who was whisked away to Mars in a UFO, so I shouldn't take it too seriously.

'The manatee will not hurt you in any way. It's only defence if threatened is to escape. Just don't let me catch you trying to harass 'em. I caught one guy a couple of months back trying to carve his initials on the back of a manatee with a penknife: he kind of got his air supply cut off for a while before we handed him over to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. And the judge down here in Crystal River, she don't like people who harass the manatees.'

Crystal River has become the centre of manatee tourism, so it guards them jealously. Around 300 manatees are attracted here by the bay's natural warm springs. But they don't play all year round. 'The manatees are here from November through to March: that's the season,' said Bob. 'A guy wanted to bring a party from Japan over last July. 'We come for manatees,' he said. I said: 'You can bring 'em over, but in July you won't find no manatees.' They came anyway and brought an inflatable manatee - well, tell the truth, it was an inflatable walrus - they pushed the tusks back in. They seemed quite happy.'

Although half a dozen companies offer Swimming with the Manatees trips, it is still a relatively low-key business, attracting around 15,000 visitors a year. The Crystal River Chamber of Commerce is keen to see the numbers grow.

In an effort to promote the manatee connection, the Chamber holds a Manatee Festival in Crystal River every February. For a weekend the place goes manatee mad. This year's featured a 'Manatee Awareness Art Contest', a craft show, a seafood festival (a tad insensitive one would have thought) and, to close the proceedings, an appearance by Elvis impersonator Ron 'The Great Imposter' Shepperd and a performance of their famous 'Achy Breaky Heart' dance by Butch and Belinda Philips.

As we approached the sanctuaries, Bob told us to put on our wet suits and flippers. He scanned the waters for signs of manatees. 'You don't always know where you'll find 'em. Manatees are like women: as soon as you think you got 'em figured out, they go off and do something else.' Our Rescuer Goddess rolled her eyes at this exhibition of unreconstructed sexism.

Finally, Bob sighted the quarry. 'OK. There's some in the water there. Get your masks on and get in the water]'

Swimming with the Manatees as an abstract concept had seemed fairly agreeable; as an imminent reality it was rather terrifying. I lingered on deck, fiddling with my snorkel, while the rest of the party plunged in with more enthusiasm.

'Don't harass 'em now,' said Bob to me as a parting shot. Frankly, harassing a manatee was the last thing on my mind. I snapped on my mask, kicked away and headed towards the rest of our party. Within a few seconds, straight in front of me through the gloom of the water, a large dark shape emerged. Certainly a manatee. My first reaction was to swim away for dear life, but for some reason escape was impossible. It was like being a piece of metal pulled towards a magnet. Suddenly I was on top of it. And - eek] - I was touching it; by accident my hand slithered down its scaly, sandpapery back.

Now I was face to face with another manatee: a few inches away from my mask was its whiskery snout and lidless eyes that studied me with obvious interest. I scratched his back and he rolled over slightly as if to say: 'No, not there - rub a bit higher, that's where it's really itchy.'

If I were a manatee I don't think I would be quite so keen to offer a warm welcome to members of the human race, but manatees clearly bear no grudges. Ask them to come out to play and they will frolic happily for as long as you want. The next 30 minutes were a delightful cross between The Little Mermaid and The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau.

My daughter popped out of the water, squeaking with delight. 'I held his flipper.' I reminded her that this constituted harassment. 'But he wanted me to hold his flipper - he held it out for me. And then I held his little face in my hands - and then he started biting my hair. He kissed me]'

Back on the pontoon boat, as we peeled off our wetsuits, the Rescuer Goddess broke open the crisps with chattering teeth and offered them around. We gratefully grabbed a handful each. 'I told you. I told you that you'd need fuel. When we get back let's all go to Taco Belle and eat the hottest food on the menu - we need to warm up fast.'

'The manatees are so wonderful,' said the volunteer fireperson from Virginia.

The Rescuer Goddess agreed: 'They really don't disappoint.' She turned to me: 'You enjoy it?'

'I was a man at ease with the manatees,' I said.

Nobody laughed. But at least I'd tickled the manatees.

Further Information: Crystal River Chamber of Commerce, 28 NW Highway 19, Crystal River, Fl 32692 (904 795 3149); Florida Division of Tourism, 18/24 Westbourne Grove, London, W2 5RH (071 727 1661)

(Photograph omitted)