The Summer We Saved the Manatees

There are certain summers that end before you realize you’re going to carry them with you for the next decade.

In May of 2013, my family took our annual trip to Fort Walton Beach for Memorial Day weekend. We stayed in a condo right on the beach, the kind where you spend half the trip tracking sand through the kitchen. We usually went later in the summer, but that year we arrived earlier than normal and the beach was ready for us. Rows of umbrellas stretching across the sand, warm air, rolling waves and enough open beach to convince us we were capable of launching a wildlife conservation movement

My brother Brett and I had an idea. An ambitious one.

We decided we were going to write “#SaveTheManatees” across the beach using piles of seaweed that had washed ashore overnight. This was during the era when hashtags were still new enough and Twitter had convinced everybody that adding one to something automatically made it part of a movement. So naturally, we viewed ourselves as activists.

We spent hours dragging seaweed across the sand like two underqualified landscapers working on an environmental campaign. The letters were gigantic. Probably fifteen feet long from start to finish. We stepped back every few minutes to admire our work like Michelangelo staring up at the Sistine Chapel if the Sistine Chapel smelled like low tide.

The beach was almost completely empty that evening. Just us, the sound of the water and this massive seaweed message sitting in the middle of the shoreline like a public service announcement.

At the time, it felt extremely important.

Part of that came from the fact that Brett and I genuinely cared about animals. Growing up, we played an absurd amount of Zoo Tycoon on our family computer after school. And specifically for me, the endangered species expansion pack. That was our thing.

Most kids used video games to blow things up. We used ours to carefully manage panda populations.

Me and my brother showing our little cousin a zoo we created on Zoo Tycoon. (Kevin Severin)

I loved the idea that animals could recover if people cared enough to help. The game rewarded you for protecting species, improving habitats and increasing populations. It sounds dramatic now, but as a kid, the concept of an animal disappearing forever bothered me. Not in a philosophical way. More in a “why are we letting this happen?” kind of way.

Manatees especially felt impossible not to root for. There’s nothing threatening about them. They just existed peacefully and somehow still needed saving from boats and pollution and humans generally making everything harder than it needs to be.

At the time, manatees were still listed as endangered and that really mattered to us. So we built our seaweed campaign headquarters on the beach and went to sleep feeling pretty accomplished.

The next morning, something unexpected happened.

The beach sweeper drove around our sign.

Their entire job was to clean the shoreline, remove debris, flatten the sand and make the beach look pristine again. Yet somehow our gross seaweed lettering had survived. The driver intentionally curved around it like it was a protected historical landmark.

I remember Brett and I looking at each other like we had just received government approval.

Our #SaveTheManatees sign written on the sand in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. (Kevin Severin)

Later that same day, we were down on the beach throwing a football around when a girl walked over and asked if she could play. A few minutes later, her friend joined too. Both of them were from Tennessee, and within about twenty minutes it felt like we had all known each other for years.

That’s one of the strange things about being young. You can become close to someone unbelievably fast. Nobody’s too busy yet. Nobody’s pretending to have everything figured out. You just decide, almost instantly, “Yeah, I like these people,” and then you spend the next several days together without overthinking any of it.

One of the first things they asked us was whether we were the ones who made the manatee sign.

Which felt incredible.

Not only had people noticed it, but apparently people were talking about it too. They told us they loved the idea and immediately tweeted “#SaveTheManatees.” Later that night, I checked Twitter and saw other people using it too. We weren’t exactly trending worldwide. But for a brief moment, it honestly felt like our weird beach project had become something bigger than just us.

The rest of the week became its own little world.

We spent nearly every day together. Football on the beach. Swimming in the ocean. Sitting around talking about absolutely nothing important for hours at a time. Eventually another guy joined the group, and somehow the dynamic worked immediately. Everybody just fit.

Me and my beach pals in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. (Kevin Severin)

Vacation friendships are funny like that. They exist outside normal life. There’s no history attached to anyone. No routines. No expectations. You meet people as they are right there in that exact moment.

At one point during the trip, we were all hanging out at the condo when one of the girls picked up a guitar and started playing.

I still remember this part clearly.

Usually when someone says, “I play guitar,” there’s at least a small adjustment period for everybody else involved. You prepare yourself emotionally for three chords and an aggressive cover of a Taylor Swift song.

But then she started singing, and it completely changed the room.

It was one of those rare moments where you recognize talent immediately, before success enters the picture. Before followers or recordings or validation from anybody else. I remember sitting there thinking, she’s actually going to do this someday. In a real way.

There’s something fascinating about seeing people before they fully become themselves. When you’re young, everybody is still forming in real time. Personalities are unfinished. Confidence comes and goes hourly. Dreams still get spoken out loud without embarrassment.

That trip sits in my memory partly for that reason. We were all somewhere in the middle of becoming whoever we’d eventually become.

Nobody knew what their life would look like yet. And that uncertainty made everything feel more alive.

On the final night of the trip, we went down to the beach after dark and discovered dinoflagellates glowing on the sand. Tiny flashes of blue light appeared wherever the waves moved. We spent probably an hour splashing the water around like complete idiots just to watch it light up again.

Then we took group pictures on the beach that I’m sure still exist somewhere buried in old phones or Facebook albums nobody logs into anymore.

Me and my beach pals say good-bye on our last day on the beach. (Kevin Severin)

Eventually, the conversation shifted toward the future the way it always does at the end of trips like that.

“We’ll definitely see each other again someday.”

At that age, you fully believe statements like that.

Then life happens.

People move, schools change and years stack up faster than expected. Temporary friendships remain temporary, even when they mattered a lot at the time.

And I think that’s okay.

Not every meaningful relationship is supposed to last forever. Some people arrive for exactly the amount of time they’re meant to. A week. A summer. One conversation. Long enough to leave an impression, short enough to become a permanent memory.

I still think about how easily that entire week could’ve never happened. If we don’t build the sign, our new friends never recognize us. We stay strangers. The week becomes just another family vacation instead of something I still remember over a decade later.

Also, in what felt like a massive personal victory for our campaign, the manatee was officially removed from the endangered species list in 2017.

I’m not saying our hashtag caused it, but I’m also not saying it didn’t.