Sandra Neal lived for nearly a decade on a sloped canal a few boat slips from the brackish waters of the Intracoastal in Delray Beach before she saw an alligator, and then she saw two — and they were 10 feet long.

"The trappers were kind of surprised because they were so far east," Neal said about her 2016 encounters with Florida’s most feared and revered semi-aquatic reptile. "We haven’t seen any more, but now we make sure we look."

Neal’s gators were two of 544 removed from Palm Beach County in 2016 either after nuisance calls from residents or through the annual permitted harvest. They were pulled from every manner of body of water — pools, private canals, retention ponds — and from the far western reaches of the Glades to the less likely Intracoastal Waterway.

According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, 2016’s numbers were slightly lower than 2015 and more than 100 fewer than the 642 alligators caught in Palm Beach County during 2014.

See an interactive map of Palm Beach County gator captures here.

In Palm Beach County, the largest concentrations of nuisance gators removed last year were in Wellington and in the 33412 ZIP Code, which straddles Northlake Boulevard between Florida’s Turnpike and 140th Avenue North. Trappers took 53 gators from Wellington and 49 from the 33412 Zip Code.

Statewide, about 8,000 gators were removed following 12,759 nuisance alligator complaints.

"My experience is that anywhere there is a small body of water, there can be an alligator," said Richard Cochran, a Boynton Beach resident who has been trapping alligators for the FWC since 2012. "I’m not trying to be an alarmist. It’s just that there is a potential anywhere there is fresh water for an alligator."

Cochran said he averages about 50 alligators per year.

Watch: Gator holding huge fish walks Florida golf course

It’s not a profitable job for Cochran – he gets $30 per gator, and he said they can be costly to process for meat and leather.

"For me, it’s a way of giving back to the community," he said. "I’m not afraid of gators, I like working with them, and I know there are a lot of people terrified of them."

According to the FWC, there are an estimated 1.3 million alligators in the state.

The American alligator is listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under their Threatened Due to Similarity of Appearance classification because it looks so similar to the American crocodile, which is federally listed as threatened. This listing provides federal protection for alligators but allows full state-approved management of alligators. All federal listings are incorporated into FWC rules.

Floridians can’t just call up the local alligator trapper to remove it like a raccoon.

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Instead, the FWC operates the Statewide Nuisance Alligator Program, where people can report a suspicious gator. The FWC decides whether it poses a risk and will then assign a trapper that it contracts with and licenses.

Cochran said if a nuisance gator is 4 feet long or longer and the trapper doesn’t have a special permit to take it alive, it’s an automatic kill. Permits to take a live gator can be costly, so he said most trappers end up killing the gators they pick up.

Otherwise, nuisance gators can be sold to an alligator farm.

"The biggest thing is people should not feed alligators," Cochran said. "If I know an alligator has been fed, I generally will kill it no matter what, because they’ve lost their fear of humans."

Carol Lyn Parrish, a spokeswoman with the FWC, said this is the busiest time of year because its nesting season. The dry conditions may also mean more alligator sightings as they search for water.

"This is when they are on the move a lot," Parrish said. "We get high call volumes because gators are much more visible."

Florida averages about seven unprovoked alligator bites per year that are serious enough to require special medical treatment, according to the FWC.

Between 1948 and September, the FWC has documented 388 unprovoked bites on humans. Twenty-four of the bites resulted in the person’s death.

In June 2016, 2-year-old Lane Graves died after he was snatched from the shore of a Disney World resort by an alligator. Six alligators were killed following the death.

Since then Disney World has added a rock wall around beaches of the lagoon that borders its resorts and has added new signs and a rope fence to the beach areas behind Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort and Spa, where the attack occurred.

There were reports of people feeding gators near that area prior to the attack.

"Some people get upset because they think I’m taking away their pet," Cochran said. "These are not pets. Do not feed them."