Friends in Florida help save beached manatees

When five friends ventured outside of their emergency shelter in Manatee County, Florida, on Sunday afternoon and saw two manatees stranded on the beach, they quickly tried to come up with a plan to save them.

Hurricane Irma caused the water in Sarasota Bay to recede toward its eyewall, leaving the manatees beached 100 yards from deeper water, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports. The friends — Tony Foradini-Campos, Emily Reisinger, Steven Reisinger, Michael Sechler, and Donovan Norton — took photos of the manatees and posted them on social media, hoping someone who could do something to help the manatees would see the pictures. "We had to do something about it," Foradini-Campos told the Herald-Tribune. "We couldn't just let those manatees die out there."

In just four hours, the post was shared 6,100 times, and deputies and officials from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission saw it and arrived at the beach with tarps that they used to get the manatees back into the water.

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"It's an amazing story," Foradini-Campos said. "It shows what people can do when they come together."