BLUFFTON — A pair of golfers got a surprise as they rounded the ninth hole of the Crescent Pointe Golf Course on Nov. 22.

A beached manatee was stranded in a tidal creek. Photos posted to the golf course’s Facebook page show the marine mammal laying in a shallow pool of water and mud beneath a golf cart bridge.

The social media post shared by the Crescent Pointe Golf Club in Bluffton on Nov. 22 included a video of the manatee splashing in the creek between the marsh grass.

Crescent Pointe’s marketing director Dylan DeBellis said the course’s general manager called to alert him to the situation.

“He calls me and he's, like, ‘we’ve got a manatee on nine,’” DeBellis said. “Usually not the words I hear from him.”

It was a first for the golf course, he said.

“Usually we’ll get gators

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