Two of the several American crocodiles near the Everglades Marina.
I was standing at the edge of the marina near the docks at the general store in Flamingo. It was a quarter moon, partially cloudy, night in Everglades National Park. A slight breeze stirred a few tiny wavelets to life. Their sloshing against the pilings nullified many of the surrounding sounds. But the splash of a surfacing fish could occasionally be heard and a barred owl repeatedly asked a mournful “who cooks for you, who cooks for you-all” from a tree closer to the road. On the docks laughing gulls and black skimmers stood mewing and murmuring , the gulls ghostly pale, the skimmers inky dark. Some ripples below me caught my eye and I turned the headlight on. A fair sized American crocodile had surfaced! My night was complete.

On almost every Everglades trip, day or night, I take a few minutes and stop by the marina to try and search out a basking crocodile. Occasionally one or more will be on the near bank or near the fish-cleaning house, but more often a croc can be found on the far bank. With diligent searching it is almost always possible to see 1 or more American crocodiles, Crocodylus acutus. Most are between 6 and 10 feet in length, but occasionally—I guess it would be more accurate to say “rarely--” a hatchling or yearling may be seen.

From a Florida population in the low hundreds a few decades ago, the number of this very cold sensitive, endangered, croc now probably exceeds 2,000. Known nests are carefully monitored by both federal and state biologists. It has been recorded in coastline habitats from Tampa Bay on the Gulf coast, southward through the Keys, then northward to Jupiter Beach on the east coast. As expected, and as always in the USA, it is most common in Miami-Dade and Monroe counties.