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By IBI Magazine / Michael Verdon
A number of Florida boaters have discovered that spotting a manatee can lead to a more "Intimate Encounter." Concerned citizens calling a publicised toll-free number to report injured manatees have instead been given offers to chat with "fantasy girls" in exchange for a credit card number.
The old manatee hotline was changed years ago, but is still listed on Florida Fish & Wildlife Commission web sites, park brochures and boater education signs. Last month, that number changed from a manatee hotline into a party line for a sex-chat company called Intimate Encounters.
Being hooked up to a sex line "makes us look really bad to the public," Elsa Haubold, in charge of the Florida Marine Institute's manatee programme, wrote in an email to agency officials, according to a story in the Associated Press.
The state agency kept the toll-free number for four years after the demise of the Florida Marine Patrol, and until July, callers to the line got a recording referring them to a new manatee hotline. The company that owns the toll-free listings then sold it to Intimate Encounters. The Fish & Wildlife Commission says it's trying to get the old number back again. In the meantime, Save the Manatee Club is replacing its old signs with the new manatee hotline number.
Intimate Encounters has a history of turning normally mundane toll-free numbers into spicy chat lines. It has taken over numbers belonging to the conservative journal, Policy Review, the World Wildlife Fund, Alltel's wireless customer service and rape crisis centers in Maine and Arizona.
(4 December 2003)
<hr width=100% size=1>Dom
<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.soltron.co.uk>the website</A>
A number of Florida boaters have discovered that spotting a manatee can lead to a more "Intimate Encounter." Concerned citizens calling a publicised toll-free number to report injured manatees have instead been given offers to chat with "fantasy girls" in exchange for a credit card number.
The old manatee hotline was changed years ago, but is still listed on Florida Fish & Wildlife Commission web sites, park brochures and boater education signs. Last month, that number changed from a manatee hotline into a party line for a sex-chat company called Intimate Encounters.
Being hooked up to a sex line "makes us look really bad to the public," Elsa Haubold, in charge of the Florida Marine Institute's manatee programme, wrote in an email to agency officials, according to a story in the Associated Press.
The state agency kept the toll-free number for four years after the demise of the Florida Marine Patrol, and until July, callers to the line got a recording referring them to a new manatee hotline. The company that owns the toll-free listings then sold it to Intimate Encounters. The Fish & Wildlife Commission says it's trying to get the old number back again. In the meantime, Save the Manatee Club is replacing its old signs with the new manatee hotline number.
Intimate Encounters has a history of turning normally mundane toll-free numbers into spicy chat lines. It has taken over numbers belonging to the conservative journal, Policy Review, the World Wildlife Fund, Alltel's wireless customer service and rape crisis centers in Maine and Arizona.
(4 December 2003)
<hr width=100% size=1>Dom
<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.soltron.co.uk>the website</A>
