A manatee, a sea mammal more routinely spotted in the waters off Florida and the Caribbean, was recently spotted alive in the York River.

Robert “JJ” Orth, a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Gloucester Point, said that he has been at the Gloucester Point campus since 1969 and this is his first local sighting of a manatee. “We were stoked,” Orth said of the VIMS reaction to the late afternoon sighting at the school’s boat basin.

Corey Holbert, a seagrass researcher at VIMS, made the initial discovery. Holbert said he was uncertain what the animal was at first, but realized it was a manatee when he saw its broad, flat tail and distinctive face and snout.

The manatee, which was six to eight feet long, is a rare sight to Chesapeake Bay, outside the summer months. The 65-degree water temperature the day of the sighting was several degrees below the animals’ preferred lower limit of 68 degrees, said VIMS spokesman David Malmquist. The animals are subject to hypothermia in waters below 60 degrees.

The last sighting of a live manatee in the Chesapeake Bay region came in July 2016, Malmquist said, when an animal was spotted near Rudee Inlet in Virginia Beach. A dead manatee was discovered in Maryland’s Patapsco River last November.

Malmquist said there is some thought that manatees may be visiting the Chesapeake Bay more regularly due to climate change and the bay’s warmer waters.

A manatee—perhaps the same one—was spotted earlier the same day about five miles downriver from the VIMS campus near Crowne Point Marina, Malmquist said.