The year started off well for us - our seal rescues are going well, we are slightly ahead of last year's numbers for January and February (we caught 2 this morning, we have now reached 37 rescues for 2022), and we were looking forward to a bunch of projects including outreach, plastic recycling, diving for rubbish and rescue missions along the Namibian coast.

Then Marine Phosphate Mining entered the stage. 

Here is a short and not so sweet summary of what it means: 3m of the top layer of the seabed are mined, meaning they will be dredged and slurped through a massive "vacuum cleaner" to extract phosphate from it, which is used as a very potent crop fertiliser all of the world. Phosphate is not dangerous - but many other substances from the seabed  including heavy metals and radioactive elements are very toxic in high concentration. Those also have to be brought up to be able to extract phosphate and there is no safe way to do that. If Namibia goes ahead and issues licenses to allow Marine Phosphate Mining, a procedure so dangerous and controversial that no other country in the world has ever allowed it, we will witness how our amazing marine ecosystem full of fish and seals will turn into a toxic wasteland. In short: we won't have to worry about entanglements anymore, because there are no seals left. 

We cannot allow Marine Phosphate Mining in Namibia - or anywhere else in the world. 

Phosphate Mining on land is not new. It usually leaves a trail of destruction behind. Only a few corporations and handful of people benefit, by the time the environmental cost are visible, the profiteers are long gone and nobody takes responsibility. 

What now? 

The good news is: it has been stopped before in 2012, and we believe it can be done again. The impact on the environment are so atrocious that the usual "it creates jobs" and "what about the tax revenue" fall short this time as we stand to lose our whole fishing industry with over 20.000 employees. We are well aware of the irony that OCN and the fishing industry are on the same side here, but we are grateful for any powerful allies in the fight against the destruction of the ocean. 

For now, we are using OCN's social media reach to inform and educate Namibians and everybody else about the facts and obvious dangers of deep sea mining. We have started a new facebook page because not everybody supports our seal rescues, especially in Namibia, but we believe that most people will support the fight against Marine Phosphate Mining. Once our audience is big enough, we will start an online petition. We published a few useful links on our website for more information. 

While all of this is happening, we are still dealing with a big seal die off. It does not seem as severe as 2020, but it is still very concerning. In 2020, starvation was the most likely cause of the die off, but this year, even fat and healthy looking pups are found dead. We will use remaining funds from an online fundraiser for seal research in 2020 to cover some of the expenses for testing to find much needed answers. As always, we will keep you posted, and the next newsletter will hopefully have nothing but positive news. Until then: Thank you for supporting us, and for helping us spread our message. 

Katja & Naude & the OCN Team