Manatees in Melbourne Waters

The Melbourne spot set aside for watching manatees is the Crane Creek Promenade in the historic downtown, at 990 East Melbourne Avenue.

Visit Space Coast lists it as a manatee and wildlife observation area on Crane Creek, and the Downtown Melbourne parks guide names its amenities as a lighted waterfront boardwalk, fishing areas, benches, pavilions and a Bird and Manatee Observation Area that connects to Melbourne Harbor Marina.

The same downtown parks list includes Claude Edge Front Street Park at 2205 Front Street, which has a public boat ramp, a fish cleaning station, a fishing pier and access to the Melbourne Causeway walking and biking path. None of these sources publishes counts of manatees at Crane Creek.

The second Melbourne place tied to manatees is out of public view. Behind the scenes at Brevard Zoo, 8225 North Wickham Road, the East Coast Zoological Foundation runs the county's first manatee rehabilitation center, which opened in April 2025.

Brevard's lagoon manatees needed help because repeated algal blooms since 2011 wiped out much of the seagrass they eat, and many starved.

Brevard Zoo explains that since 2011 the Indian River Lagoon has experienced countless algal blooms that caused a significant loss of seagrass, a critical food for lagoon-dwelling manatees, and that manatees in the area were dying of starvation at a record rate. That led to an Unusual Mortality Event declaration in March 2021, and the zoo describes Brevard County as the epicenter of a historic wave of manatee deaths.

In a December 2021 appeal, Brevard Zoo stated that Brevard County sees nearly triple the number of manatee rescues and deaths of any other Florida county. The zoo added that the mortality event was still being investigated by the state wildlife commission and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and that poor water quality in the lagoon had caused widespread seagrass loss, according to the state agency.

The Melbourne zoo's first response was people. After the 2021 appeal nearly tripled its $30,000 goal within weeks, Brevard Zoo, whose volunteers had already spent about six years helping at manatee rescues, releases and necropsies, built a team of about 85 staff and select volunteers with animal experience to call on when the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission requested help with rescues, provisioning and recoveries.

The Manatee Rehabilitation Center is a behind-the-scenes facility at Brevard Zoo in Melbourne that cares for up to six stable, non-critical manatees at a time until they can be released.

The zoo planned to begin with three tanks in behind-the-scenes areas of its Melbourne grounds, with the work made possible by a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission grant. Its construction update called for repurposing a 20-foot round tank to hold two subadult manatees and adding two 40 by 20 foot oval tanks, each able to house two to four manatees.

The finished Brevard Zoo facility can care for up to six manatee patients at a time, depending on size, according to the zoo's manatee program page. It includes a walk-in cooler for manatee diets, a life support system for the pools, a transport truck for rescues and releases, and cameras that let staff watch patients around the clock. It takes stable, non-critical manatees that need monitoring, weight gain or better weather before release.

Brevard Zoo does not decide releases alone. Care decisions are made with oversight from the state wildlife commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Manatee Rescue and Rehabilitation Partnership, and an MRP team decides when a manatee is ready and where it goes back into the water. Brevard Zoo is one of the 24 organizations in that partnership.

The Melbourne facility is meant to grow. East Coast Zoological Foundation staff have completed initial upgrades to the life support system, and the foundation says it hopes eventually to equip the Brevard Zoo center for manatees that need critical care as well. Conservation Zoologist Kylie Lawson has described the current role as easing capacity problems at critical care centers so they can take in more animals.

Four manatees are named on Brevard Zoo's posts about the Melbourne center: Churro and Randa in 2025, then Andme and Tugboat.

The first two patients arrived from SeaWorld Orlando when the center opened in 2025, according to the zoo's opening announcement. Churro reached her target weight of 600 pounds at Brevard Zoo, and Randa had been rescued from the DeSoto Canal that January. Two full-time staff run the center: Senior Conservation Manager Becca Downey, who spent 21 years on SeaWorld Orlando's rescue team, and Conservation Zoologist Kylie Lawson, a former state wildlife biologist.

By the end of 2025, the zoo's year-in-review post reported, Churro was back in her natural range after rehabilitation and Randa was close to release. The Melbourne center then paused intake for upgrades, while Downey and Lawson traveled more than 3,400 miles assisting other organizations with manatee rescues, releases and transport.

The next arrivals were long-term residents. Andme and Tugboat came to Brevard Zoo from Jacksonville Zoo and Botanical Gardens. Both have buoyancy problems from their injuries that require shallow pools, and they eat a steady diet of romaine lettuce.

Manatees in Melbourne waters are protected by state speed zones under Florida Administrative Code rule 68C-22.006 and by state and federal law against harassment.

Under the Florida Manatee Sanctuary Act, rule 68C-22.006, Brevard County Zones, sets the manatee protection zones for Brevard waters, including those off Melbourne, and its latest version took effect June 24, 2002. The foundation's director of conservation has used the Brevard Zoo patients to make the same point, citing posted speed zones and watching for manatees breaking the surface as everyday protections.

For anyone at the Crane Creek observation area in Melbourne, the state wildlife commission's viewing guidelines describe the West Indian manatee as an imperiled species protected by state and federal law. FWC asks people to look but not touch, not to feed manatees or give them water, not to chase or isolate a manatee or separate a cow and calf, and to stay out of areas marked No Entry Manatee Refuge.

Habitat is the longer fix. The foundation's seagrass restoration team is working to bring back seagrass in the Indian River Lagoon through pilot planting projects and two seagrass nurseries, and the zoo's opening announcement says its sister campus, the future Bowen Aquarium and Conservation Center, will host a public-facing manatee rehabilitation center for more critical cases than the Melbourne tanks take. Brevard Zoo lists FWC's Wildlife Alert line, 1-888-404-3922, for reporting a sick, injured or distressed manatee.

Last verified: October 15, 2026, against seven Brevard Zoo pages and releases, FWC's manatee viewing guidelines, Florida Administrative Code rule 68C-22.006, Visit Space Coast and the Downtown Melbourne parks guide.