Manatees really aren't fat - they only have about a quarter inch of body fat, which is why they return to warmer waters in the winter. Just had to toss out that tidbit of useful information.
But this is all part of the whole "we love our fellow mammals" protection act which has been overblown and taken to the nth degree in recent years. In GA, $20,000. fine for interfering with a marine mammal, which includes manatees. Yep, that's four zeros. And they take that crap seriously. Local shrimper was hamming it up for tourists, got fined and lost his license for holding a piece of shrimp overboard to a dolphin. A man's livelihood gone over a piece of shrimp that, had he swept it off the deck with a shovel would still have been eaten by the dolphin but would have been legal. Utterly freakin' ridiculous.