Editor’s note: Daily reporter April Goodwin and photo editor Andrea Melendez accompanied the scuba divers to Florida during Thanksgiving break.

The cold, black morning was dimly lit by the faint glow of the rising sun.

The dark, glass-like water trembled under the single rumble of the boat’s motor.

Fifteen Iowa State scuba divers piled into a beaten-up, metal motor boat rental that morning and headed into the manatee-filled waters of Crystal River in Florida.

Nearly 300 manatees spend the winter in the warm spring waters of Crystal River each year from the months of October through April. This provides snorkelers and scuba divers a rare opportunity to interact with the endangered species in their natural environment.

The scuba divers slipped quietly into the waters of King’s Bay, anxiously awaiting their first encounter with the lovable creature.

Within seconds of entering the fresh water with the awkward snorkeling equipment, manatees were seeking them out as much as they were seeking the manatees.

“[Manatees] have a rounded, mermaid-like tail, whiskers, little eyes that blink at you and wrinkles like those wrinkly dogs,” said Teresa Daniels, a senior in civil engineering.

“They had rough and calloused skin and white tummies. They look like big blobs with really thin arms and are very slow-moving but graceful,” she said.

“We got to play with them, and you could pet them and they’d roll over for you,” Daniels added.

The gentle manatees seem to be the “puppy dogs” of the water. “They were like giant puppy dogs that were less active because they weren’t as mobile [as dogs],” Daniels said.

Jay Joblinske, senior in electrical engineering, said, “They were like 300-pound, playful kids.”

The manatee is an endangered animal because of fatal accidents with motor boats.

The manatee is an air-breathing mammal, which rises to the surface at intervals to breathe.

It only reveals a tiny section of its snout above the surface when breathing, and gray color makes it difficult to see from a distance.

“It was cool to see and touch an endangered species … It was kind of weird because you read about endangered species and everything, but they never seem that real,” Joblinske said.

Many of the manatees the students saw were slashed with a series of white scars from past brutal cuts the animals had received from a rotating motor, Daniels said.

The divers were part of a scuba diving trip headed by Jerry Symons, assistant professor of health and human performance and ISU diving coach.

Symons also teaches scuba diving classes for ISU and Ames Parks and Recreation.

Twenty-seven divers joined Symons for the trip, 20 of whom were ISU students.

Most of them traveled to Crystal River to become certified scuba divers.

Others came along to help or to have the opportunity to swim with the manatees.

Massive springs pump more than 650 million gallons of fresh water into Crystal River daily, according to a brochure from Port Paradise Resort, where the divers stayed. Divers have a 100-foot underwater visibility there.

“[Rainbow River is] such a wonderful river. There’s so much life in there,” Symons said.

The divers said the river was filled with an array of bass, bluegill, alligator gar, sunfish, trumpet fish, snapping turtles, crappie, pike and mullet.

The divers saw a five-foot alligator on the beach the morning of the dive and a water moccasin snake in the water next to the loading dock.

“Seeing the water moccasin made me feel a little uneasy, but that was really the only time I felt unsure of my safety,” Daniels said.

The divers explored small caves and crevasses on the bottom of the river.

“I thought the caves were really cool. I liked how you could pull yourself into them and then the warm water in the caves would push you back out,” said Patrick Vest, senior in industrial technology.

The ground water also mysteriously bubbled under the sand in certain areas, creating an unusual sight and sensation underneath the divers’ palms and fingertips. “That was a weird feeling. It was warm and it was like you weren’t touching anything, but you were touching something. It’s hard to describe,” Vest said.

The divers visited two other sites, Three Sisters, a shallow, sandy, freshwater stream, and Blue Grotto, a 50-foot deep cavern.

“The water [at Three Sisters] was a cool blue-green color. It was cool swimming up a stream. Now I know what it’s like to be a trout swimming upstream to go spawning,” Daniels said with a chuckle. “It was hard work.”

Underwater lights held by instructors lit the sides of Blue Grotto and revealed pale catfish on the silt-layered bottom.

“It felt like you were v in a giant aquarium with goldfish and sludge-eaters and everything,” Daniels said.

Vest described the sensation of diving into the cavern.

“It felt like I was flying because the surface was way far above and the bottom was way far below. You could look up and see forever,” he said.

“The air bubbles on the top of the cavern looked like the liquid metal from ‘Terminator 2.’ The bubbles would collect into a big puddle and then, suddenly, when there were too many, it would break and the bubbles would escape to the surface,” Daniels added.

Along with enjoying the underwater life and creatures, the divers underwent certification procedures. These included basic scuba diving tasks such as flooding and clearing their masks, taking their masks completely off and putting them back on underwater, emergency ascents, buddy breathing out of an octopus mouthpiece, removing and replacing their buoyancy control device vests and taking their weight belts off and putting them back on.

“Your biggest inhibitor is your own self-imposed limits,” Daniels said.

“If anybody ever has free time, take scuba class. It opens your eyes to a whole new world.

“You should live everyday in the knowledge that you don’t know how much longer you have,” she said.