That is exactly the question we have been asking ourselves for a long time: if we split up the team and patrol at Pelican Point and Cape Cross at the same time, will we find more entangled seals and get more rescues?
For the past two years, we saw entangled seals almost every single time we went to Pelican Point or Cape Cross. But for the past few weeks, we have not been able to see as many as usual. We should be in the middle of high season for rescues, but we still have patrol days without entangled seals.
Where are they? Have we reached the goal of no more entanglements? Is our work finally done or are we failing as self proclaimed seal conservationists?
We know entanglements are happening all the time. Disentanglements treat the symptoms of plastic pollution, not the cause. As long as our oceans are full of plastic rubbish, animals will get entangled. There is no reason to believe that less animals are affected, no matter how much we want it to be true. As long it is allowed or tolerated to throw discarded fishing gear and plastic packaging into the ocean, we will have to live with the consequences of animal entanglement. So if our work is not done, it must be option 2: we are not finding them.
We decided to stop our pity party and rather fix the problem by splitting up our rescue team into two, and by trying out our very first evening patrol at Cape Cross.
Denzil, Kat and Wally tackled Pelican Point. and Antoine and Naude went to Cape Cross for an evening and morning patrol at the seal reserve where they camped under the beautiful Namibian sky.
