This tour was an adventure, but the safety measures were not well enforced. We got an email about an hour before our start time (as we were driving to the location) that we needed to get to the location another way because the bridge was closed. The bridge closure was planned and we could have been notified prior. Once we arrived to the meeting location, we didn’t know where to go. A tour guide from another group finally came up to direct us to the right place. Our guide, Eric, had us get life jackets on but told us we didn’t need to have them buckled all the way. He breezed through a quick tutorial on how to row with the oars (twice because we had a mother and son, a 9 year old, who joined us later) and then we got in the kayaks and started to the canal. As we travelled, we didn’t stay close together as a group which was not the safest in the darkness. At one point, the mother and son were far behind us and got capsized by a manatee. We rowed back to them and Eric jumped in the water to help them right their kayak and then dragged it to the swampy bank to load it. Our group went and grabbed the oars that were floating away. Jumping into the alligator infested water and dragging the kayak to the bank probably wasn’t the best option. We stayed together better after that, but not completely. The tour guide told us a lot about manatees, dolphins, and plant life but most of the information we recorded about the canal kept changing (it’s no more than 3-4 ft vs it’s 40ft deep). Once we got back to the bank, we realized that the mother had lost her phone and rental car key in the canal. We were in a remote location and the tow truck/car replacement wasn’t going to be able to get there for at least two hours. It was 9:30 by this time and it seemed that most people were leaving (our tour guide included because he had to “get the truck back”). Our group stayed to help the mom and son find a safer place to be until her replacement car came because it wasn’t going to be safe to just wait on their own. Overall, we have quite the story to tell. We didn’t see any bioluminescence, but we know that was not guaranteed. We did see some manatees and alligators, and learned some good information from this guide, but more safety precautions would have been appreciated.