A manatee in Maryland is a visitor, not a resident. The state’s 14 records trace the northern reach of a well-known wandering pattern, when a few West Indian manatees travel up the Atlantic coast and into Chesapeake Bay on warm water. Nearly every report comes from Assateague Island National Seashore, where the coastal bays stay shallow and grassy.
The timing is tight: almost all Maryland records fall in October, with a straggler in November. That’s the tail end of the wandering season, when water temperatures drop and the animals turn back south. A manatee caught in cooling coastal water faces real danger, which is why fall sightings along the mid-Atlantic often draw wildlife responders.
NatureServe’s S1N rank captures the situation precisely: critically imperiled, and the N marks it as a nonbreeding visitor. The IUCN lists the species as Vulnerable globally. Maryland will never be manatee country, but the Assateague records show the state’s coastal bays function as a genuine, if marginal, stop on the species’ warm-season map.
