Despite a tragic tendency to collide with motorboats, manatees are neither sluggish of mind nor body. Just ask any of the elated if exhausted scientists from a multi-national team which, after years of trying, recently captured and tagged a manatee in Panama.

“We think of them as lethargic, dumb animals, and they’re anything but,” says Daniel Gonzalez of Duke University.

Gonzalez, with Kherson Ruiz of Asociación de Amigos y Vecinos de la Costa y la Naturaleza (AAMVECONA) , led the first capture in Southern Mesoamerica – a feat involving manatee experts, nongovernmental groups and community members from Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Mexico and the United States.

The cross-border project is supported by the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund as part of a larger initiative led by multiple organizations in the Mesoamerica biodiversity hotspot.

“Manatees are clever, amazing, extremely aware of their environment,” Gonzalez attests. “It took 20 of us humans and still, they would slip away. It was a humbling process.”

There’s unabashed awe in Gonzalez’ voice as he describes the agility with which manatees time-and-again slid through nets, and the grace with which these 1,000-plus pound mammals maneuvered through the mangrove-fringed San San Pond Sack wetlands, dodging nearby captors without leaving so much as a water footprint.

The capture of an Antillean manatee (Trichechus manatus ssp. manatus), a subspecies of the West Indian manatee, is the result of an unprecedented collaboration between AAMVECONA, Fundación Manatí-Trichechus (formerly known as Fundación Salvemos al Manatí de Costa Rica) and Fundación Amigos del Río San Juan.

LEARN MORE: CEPF supports numerous initiatives around the world.

This is not the end of the story. Rather, it’s the beginning of a conservation tale; one that is just now starting to be revealed via a tracking tag attached to the manatee's tail.

The tagging of the adolescent female named Manyu represents a milestone in the world of Sirenian conservation because little is known about the movements of manatees south of Belize.

Manyu, it appears, lives in a mangrove-fringed coastal river about a half-dozen miles south of the Costa Rica-Panama border.

Or does she?

How these threatened animals use the habitat poses countless questions for scientists and conservationists. Perhaps Manyu was simply passing through, and lured by a free lunch.

“Do these animals move out of the San San complex,” Gonzalez asks, “and into Costa Rica? Or Panama? Do they go out to the Atlantic into the sea grass beds?”

Carlos Espinoza of Fundación Manatí-Trichechus de Costa Rica is excited about the prospect of all-new data: “Researchers in trans-boundary work area can now prove that nature has no limits,” he says.

The water of this river system in Panama is tannin-stained and coffee-dark. It’s impossible to spot the gray creatures from a boat or plane. In addition, these manatees don’t congregate like some do in other parts of the world. Cryptic by nature, these seem particularly shy of humans, and rightfully so; they were hunted just a generation ago.

The method of capture, adapted specially for this environment, involved nets secured by mangrove roots and an irresistible bait of banana leaves.

Says Gonzalez: “These animals were feeding, fully alert, and capable of incredible bursts of strength – a force to be reckoned with.”

The capture involved local fishermen and inhabitants of the San San wetlands: half were in boats, and half in the water, all attempting to corral a manatee within a netted site.

“The manatees would feel out the net with gentle little touches,” Gonzalez says, “checking all the corners to see if they were sealed."

“Every time we came closer and closer (to catching an individual) we learned some of the animal’s tricks – and they learned some of ours.”

Manatees went through the nets. Manatees went over the nets. After a week, a 2-meter-long female went into the net.

Researchers outfitted Manyu with a tag enabling monitoring of her movement by satellite. They tethered it to her tail on a buoy that will detach if it becomes entangled.

The data that’s being collected no doubt will raise questions even as it informs and bolsters an integrated conservation strategy developed by the partners.

“Once you are able to capture an animal, it takes your questions to another level,” Gonzalez says.