MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, Alabama -- When word of stranded manatees began to spread in this quiet river community in south Alabama, residents pulled together on New Year's Day to help the Dauphin Island Sea Lab attempt a rescue.

The response culminated into what is likely the first-ever successful rescue of a distressed manatee in the state, according to Dr. Ruth Carmichael, director of the sea lab's manatee sighting and marine mammal stranding networks.

"This is the first time in history that this has ever happened in Alabama," Carmichael said. "To my knowledge, this is the first time that anyone has ever rescued a dying manatee. It's never happened before."

After a close but unsuccessful attempt at rescuing a second of three manatees in the Magnolia River, crews headed to Florida with the rescued mammal for rehabilitation but it died shortly after the truck crossed the state line, according to Carmichael.

"Unfortunately that animal didn't make it and, of course, we're really concerned about the other two animals that are out there," she said. "We're going to try to coordinate to get those other animals."

Residents first spotted the West Indian manatees with tell-tale signs of cold stress, such as pitted skin and discoloration, before Christmas near a spring-fed area of the Magnolia River called the "Cold Hole." But until New Year's Eve, the manatees had not stayed in one area long enough to launch a rescue.

While manatees usually head to warmer waters in Florida around mid-November, these didn't not make the journey for unknown reasons. Manatees begin to show symptoms of cold stress when water temperature fall below 68 degrees.

Currently, the water temperature at the mouth of Mobile Bay is 56 degrees but due to the spring-fed area on the river the temperature there is hovering in the low- to mid-60s and obviously attractive to the manatees.

Manatee specialists with the sea lab as well as Dr. Tres Clark, an aquatic veterinarian, and Suzanne Smith of the Audubon Nature Institute in New Orleans and over 20 community volunteers conducted a day-long rescue operation at the Cold Hole.

Using the sea lab's boat, volunteers helped load up a net that was used to capture the first manatee just before 2 p.m. During the second rescue attempt, debris at the bowl-shaped Cold Hole, which has a maximum depth of about 30 feet, caused the net to hit several snags that led to the eventual release of the manatee despite a roughly hour-long effort.

During the unsuccessful attempt, many of the sea lab manatee specialists were in the water around the net with the manatee within 10 feet of the shore and at times catching breath within inches of rescuers' faces.

Scott Carmichael, who helped coordinate the on-site rescue operation, came so close to the manatee that he commented on the smell of its breath. He worked alongside sea lab technicians Elizabeth Hieb and Noel Wingers and senior graduate student Allen Aven along with several volunteers in the water.

While crews were attempting to rescue the second manatee, the first one was covered with blankets and being administered oxygen on a padded floor of a U-Haul truck.

Carmichael said a large, open lesion on the mammal's right side was usually only found on carcasses. The roughly 7-foot-long body was also very skinny.

After the mammal's death en route to Florida, crews turned around and headed to the Dauphin Island Sea Lab where the body was iced for examination.

"We're actually doing a necropsy on the animal today just to confirm case of death but it's obvious it was a very cold-stressed animal, very sick," Carmichael said in a phone interview Friday morning. "When we looked at the ventral side, the belly side, last night after we got the animal back here, it actually had big open lesions like that other one, about two inches diameter. ... It had those all over its stomach. It was probably really close to death when we brought it in. It's unfortunate and it was worse than we initially realized."

'People do care'

In spite of the animal's death, Carmichael credited her staff and the community with a successful rescue effort.

"They got that first animal in and landed very quickly and into the truck with the vet," she said. "I feel great about how the event went as far as what we needed to do. The community was fantastic. I just can't say enough great things about the Magnolia Springs community. We really appreciated how supportive and helpful everyone was ... because we couldn't do it without that kind of support."

Magnolia Spring resident and sea lab volunteer Simone Lipscomb served as a manatee spotter on her kayak in the days leading up to the rescue and helped set up Thursday's operation with Hieb, who manages the Manatee Sighting Network as part of the sea lab.

Lipscomb took to Facebook to reach out to the Magnolia Springs community and residents stepped up to help, such as Bill and Sue Cummins who allowed dozens of people onto their river-front property for the rescue.

"I'm just amazed," Lipscomb said. "Our community is awesome. It's just good, good, good. People do care and I think that's amazing. To see kids out here with their parents learning about what's in their backyards is a good thing."

Hieb reached out to the community on its Facebook page late Thursday night.

"On behalf of the entire Marine Mammal Stranding Team at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, I would like to extend our extreme gratitude for the efforts today of the Magnolia Springs community, led by the amazing Simone Lipscomb," Hieb wrote. "To say we were overwhelmed by your support, graciousness, and overall willingness to help is a massive understatement. We are currently coordinating plans to attempt to rescue the other two manatees also seen today. For now, we ask residents to please continue reporting sightings to the Manatee Sighting Network at 1-866-493-5803."

Another rescue attempt will likely come together after the stormy weather passes through the area over the weekend. Carmichael said the sea lab is working toward borrowing a specialized mammal "capture boat" for a second rescue operation.

The sea lab has used capture boats in the past to put tracking tags on manatees. Since 2009, the nonprofit has captured and released 10 manatees and two of those were captured twice at different times for a total of 12 operations.

Why are they still here?

Thanks to the tracking tag, the sea lab has discovered that many of the manatees coming to Alabama originate in Crystal River on Florida's west coast, near the Big Bend.

According to Carmichael, manatees usually migrate to Alabama waters in mid-May and leave in mid-November with some fluctuation due to weather conditions. At any given time during the peak of the season, Carmichael estimates there are upward of two dozen manatees somewhere in state waters feeding, breeding and calving. But in terms of those coming and going as part of a migratory stop-over point, the numbers are close to 100.

She called the stranding of the three manatees, especially as a percentage of the core population, very unusual.

"We've never had this happen before," she said.

Her theory on why the trio got stuck is centered on a growing population of the endangered species, whose numbers were as low as 160 in the late 1960s. With some 5,000 manatees in Florida today, Carmichael said it's likely the manatees are reestablishing themselves in fringe areas due to a lack of resources in more heavily populated areas of the Sunshine State.

"A lot people like to think they've never been here before and this is new, but they're in the fossil record here," Carmichael said. "We had animals here before when their population was high. ... So if you figure, you've got recovery and you don't have an increase in resources so you have a situation where the animals have to go somewhere and all of sudden it's a cost-benefit thing. It's actually worth it for them to make the travel. Maybe because they can have better access to certain females or maybe because there's certain resources they're just spreading out. They're just doing their thing.

"Then if you add to that, depending on what you think about climate change, if climate conditions are changing in a way that is even allowing the animals to come here earlier and stay longer than you can have a couple of different things working together."

Leading up to recent cold winters starting in 2009-10, there were 14 years of warm winters, Carmichael said.

"My guess is that animals figured out places like these where they can overwinter in mild years," she said. "So then you add to that just more animals come here, staying longer and some animals figuring out or getting cues from environment that they can probably stay here. Or just because they're young and naive and not figuring out they need to leave. Add all those things together and we've gotten more strandings and we've gotten more carcasses. We've gotten more carcasses since we started our stranding network than in the entire history of the state ever recorded. Just us in the last seven years."

Dauphin Island Sea Lab researchers found that prior to 2007 only seven dead manatees were recorded in waters in and around Alabama and for this season alone the manatee stranding network picked up six in the state as well as Mississippi and a portion of the Florida Panhandle.

"I just think that the carcasses alone are some pretty substantial evidence that something has changed; things are changing," Carmichael said.

And the sea lab specialists are trying not to add to the death toll with hopes that the two remaining manatees in Magnolia Springs are not as sick as the first one and can be rescued when conditions allow.