Tampa zoo makes push for manatee emoji

TAMPA, Fla. — You can help create an emoji depicting one of Florida’s most beloved creatures.

Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo has begun a campaign to convince Unicode, the nonprofit that regulates the universal coding for emojis, to adopt its manatee emoji design to raise awareness about the threatened aquatic mammal. The zoo has created an online petition seeking 25,000 signatures.

The effort coincides with Manatee Awareness Month, a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission initiative designed to educate boaters about the dangers they pose to manatees.

The manatee population has begun to rebound, but so has the number of them hit by boaters.