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SeaDaddy’s Adventures – Swimming with Manatees – Review

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SeaDaddy’s Adventures located at Florida’s Crystal River offers intimate outings with manatees.

December 30th, 2022

by Kevin Willse

During the winter months Crystal River is graced with the flock of the manatees. Whether you are a native to Florida or just visiting, swimming with manatees is always a special and unique experience. Located in the heart of Crystal River, SeaDaddys offers an incredible and relatively private diving experience that gives an excellent opportunity to learn more about and unite with these gentle giants.

The SeaDaddys experience begins as soon as you step foot in their shop. They have a full display of the ecosystem of the area, which helps explain why each part of it is so important. The education and preservation of nature is a huge part of the SeaDaddy experience. The entire tour is rooted in the belief of preserving not only the manatees, but nature as a whole. After touring the nature display you will be given a presentation about the state and federal rules of the manatee tours. The short video explains the area you will visit and the reasons behind the sanctuary areas as well as the proper ways of interacting with the manatees. The SeaDaddys’ staff focus on passive observation of the manatees. You will hear this idea presented several times during the tour as it is part of their mantra in how to treat and help preserve the manatees. Although, these creatures are very large (up to 3,000 pounds) and resilient, their populations have decreased over the years and are considered endangered. The staff goes over how to prepare for the tour as well as going over the do’s and don’ts of what to do in the water to optimize our experience as well as the experience of the manatees. Following the chat, we were then fitted in our wetsuits and ready to go.

A quick shuttle ride from the shop took us to the marina where we got onto our watercraft and were given masks and snorkels. SeaDaddys keeps the tours small to enhance each guest’s experience. The maximum number of occupants is six giving everyone a fair shot at getting a great view of the sea cows. We had the pleasure of having our tour with Captain Lenore and guide Colin. They did a great job of explaining King’s Bay and answered any questions we had. They had great knowledge of the area, which was essential in finding the hot spots the manatees liked to hang out. However, we learned a lot about the area as well as the potential environmental issues that it’s facing and the ways they are attempting to remedy them such as the constantly mentioned passive observation. This is one of the many great things that separated SeaDaddys from other manatee tour companies in the area. Each time we stopped we had a great opportunity to get in the water and get up-close and personal with these amazing creatures. Just an incredible experience. Although, it was pretty chilly outside, the water was very comfortable. We got a chance to see many different manatees and spend a good amount of time with them. One of them actually seemed as interested in us as we were in it and came right up to us. This was a great time to take photographs and videos of the experience. SeaDaddys also provides trip photos for a fee after the trip.

SeaDaddys gave an excellent manatee diving experience. From the second you walked in their shop you could sense the passion they have for these amazing creatures. The staff is very involved in the local communities in protecting and assisting the conservation of the environments the manatees live in. They continually train to help in rescue efforts and are involved in rescues when necessary. This dedication is felt throughout the manatee tour is and is a main reason why SeaDaddys is who to go to when in the area of Crystal River.

For more information on Seadaddy’s Adventures visit HERE

 

  • SeaDaddy's Adventures - Swimming with Manatees

  • SeaDaddy's Adventures - Swimming with Manatees

  • SeaDaddy's Adventures - Swimming with Manatees

  • SeaDaddy's Adventures - Swimming with Manatees

  • SeaDaddy's Adventures - Swimming with Manatees

  • SeaDaddy's Adventures - Swimming with Manatees

  • SeaDaddy's Adventures - Swimming with Manatees

  • SeaDaddy's Adventures - Swimming with Manatees

  • SeaDaddy's Adventures - Swimming with Manatees

  • SeaDaddy's Adventures - Swimming with Manatees

  • SeaDaddy's Adventures - Swimming with Manatees

  • SeaDaddy's Adventures - Swimming with Manatees

  • SeaDaddy's Adventures - Swimming with Manatees

  • SeaDaddy's Adventures - Swimming with Manatees

  • SeaDaddy's Adventures - Swimming with Manatees

  • SeaDaddy's Adventures - Swimming with Manatees

  • SeaDaddy's Adventures - Swimming with Manatees

  • SeaDaddy's Adventures - Swimming with Manatees

  • SeaDaddy's Adventures - Swimming with Manatees

  • SeaDaddy's Adventures - Swimming with Manatees

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BODYSCAPES Ignites the Miami Design District

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A Miami art experience that reimagines the female form as an evolving emotional landscape, honoring the ways women navigate vulnerability, transformation, and strength within the intimate terrain of their own bodies.


December 1, 2025

Miami is about to welcome an exhibition unlike anything else this season. A forty foot LED wall is lighting up the Design District with a monumental digital environment entirely shaped by women. BODYSCAPES, presented by Barcelona’s Load Gallery, opens its Miami edition at Jayaram Law Studio, and I was invited in early for a viewing before the public arrives.

Walking into the space felt like entering an emotional landscape rather than an exhibition. The imagery unfolded slowly at first, then washed over the room with color, motion, and softness that carried both vulnerability and undeniable strength. Bodies appeared as if carved from water and light. Figures dissolved into sky. The screen shifted from quiet introspection to powerful presence. As a woman, the experience felt deeply personal, as if the installation was acknowledging the parts of womanhood we often hold quietly.

Load founder Alex Simorré partnered with Miami attorney and arts advocate Vivek Jayaram to bring this exhibition to the United States. Jayaram shared that it is “one of the most compelling projects we have ever had the honor to host,” and after seeing it firsthand, the meaning behind those words becomes obvious.

Miami is a city that embraces complexity. Beauty, reinvention, identity, culture, movement, and resilience all coexist here. BODYSCAPES feels made for that landscape. It honors the nuance of womanhood and invites viewers to step into an immersive world that mirrors the emotional terrains women navigate every day.

Fourteen women artists, each expanding the body into something vast

BODYSCAPES features a global roster of women artists, each approaching the body as a living environment shaped by nature, memory, and emotion. Their work spans photography, digital video, AI, performance, and conceptual visual storytelling.

The full Miami lineup includes
Farrah Carbonell, Dancevatar, I M Devi, Michelle van Dijk, Alba Duque, Maria Fynsk Norup, Adaeze Okaro, Natalie Karpushenko, Emi Kusano, Christy Lee Rogers, SERIFA, Ivona Tau, X New Worlds, and Zhuk.

Together, they create a collective vision of womanhood that is fluid, surreal, grounded, and powerful.

Moments inside the exhibition that stayed with me

Alba Duque
Duque’s work confronts womanhood with radical honesty. In the group scenes, women gather across city streets and desert landscapes, walking shoulder to shoulder in underwear and soft neutrals. The effect is powerful. These bodies are unfiltered and real. They carry softness and stretch marks and strength with equal visibility. In quieter images, women hold their stomachs, hips, and thighs with a tenderness that feels both vulnerable and revolutionary. One of the most striking photographs shows a woman crouched low in the dust, holding another woman in a gesture of exhaustion and care. Another reveals a close-up of hands gripping the folds of skin on a stomach, a rare moment of truth that feels almost intimate to witness. Duque’s images celebrate women exactly as they are. No hiding. No smoothing. No pretending.

Christy Lee Rogers
Rogers’ underwater worlds feel almost cosmic. In one image, a woman floats against a star-flecked indigo sky, her white ruffled dress blooming around her like a constellation. In another, deep blue fabric twists around bodies tangled in motion, their limbs fading into shadow until they feel more like emotion than anatomy. The pink and lavender photographs toward the bottom of the page glow like memories half submerged, soft and dreamlike, as if you are witnessing a moment of surrender beneath the water’s surface.

Ivona Tau
Tau’s work shifts between digital fragmentation and bold color. One image shows a woman outlined in neon green and red, her profile dissolving into pixel-like texture that feels both artificial and strangely intimate. Another shows three women in sculptural blue forms, their bodies shaped into angular planes that look almost architectural. In the softer blue portraits, the figures’ faces melt into smooth, mask-like surfaces that suggest both anonymity and tenderness. Tau’s world is uncanny and emotional at the same time, revealing how digital distortion can expose truths rather than hide them.

Adaeze Okaro
Okaro’s photographs glow with deep amber and gold. Her women stand against a textured ochre backdrop, wrapped in flowing tulle that lifts and falls like flames. In one image, a figure is almost entirely veiled by soft orange fabric, holding a bouquet of white roses that feels ceremonial, almost sacred. In another, a woman raises her arms with slow, deliberate grace, the fabric pooling and drifting around her as if she is summoning light. The floral crown portraits are especially powerful, transforming the subject into a living sculpture of beauty, ritual, and self-possession.

What BODYSCAPES leaves you with

BODYSCAPES is not simply a digital installation. It is an emotional encounter. It views the female body not as an object but as a landscape of lived experience. Memory, tension, softness, conflict, healing, and rising strength all appear across the screen in forms that feel familiar in ways that words cannot always explain.

Standing there in the glow of the forty foot screen, I felt a sense of recognition. It was the recognition that every woman holds multitudes. That our bodies carry stories. That vulnerability and power are not opposites but companions. BODYSCAPES gives those truths space to breathe.

Miami will see many exhibitions this season, but this one feels singular. It feels like a place where women can finally be seen without restraint.

If You Go

WHAT: BODYSCAPES, a digital group exhibition presented by Barcelona’s Load Gallery
WHERE: Load Gallery Miami at Jayaram Law Studio
3800 NE 1st Avenue, Suite 500, Miami Design District
WHEN: December 2 through January 31 – open to the public December 2 to 9th, then by appointment only
COST: Free admission

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