We would like to start off by wishing everybody a happy and healthy new year. 2020 brought some unforeseen challenges to the world, and we hope that 2021 will be a bit easier.
We were very lucky at OCN that our work was very little affected by lock downs and self isolation because our seals like to stay away from human beings anyways. That seems like a smart move, considering how badly seals are affected by human negligence. 

Breeding season forced us to slow down, we could not endanger new born seal pups and we also did not want to interfere with sensitive mating rituals. We could do a few opportunistic seal rescues, but we did not come close to our usual numbers of anything between 5 and 15 rescues per outing. There is no reason to assume that entanglements have stopped, but many seals spent more time than usual in the refreshing waters instead of baking away on the beaches in the African heat. 
We were shocked to find a barely 6 week old seal pup that was already entangled. If you have not seen the video, this is the link. 
Here is the issue: seal pups don't swim out very far. They stay close to the beach, they are not ready for the deep blue sea, and we believe that the entanglement happened very close to shore. So we are planning a little expedition. We will get together with professional and recreational divers (Naude is a diving instructor and Katja is a dive master) to have a look what's going on there and see if we can do an underwater beach cleanup, before our seal pups get fatally trapped. 

We are full of plans for the upcoming year. Thanks to the generous support we are receiving from all over the world, we are able to plan ahead for 2021.

We are excited to announce that our permanent team has grown: please welcome Wally to Ocean Conservation Namibia! 
Wally is an old friend of Naude's and Katja's, and after a few years in Norway he has found his way back to Namibia, together with his wife Katrin. Wally is an old pro when it comes to seal rescues, he did his first seal rescue 8 years ago with Naude. 

Naude, Denzil and Wally (the guy in the middle of the picture) went to Cape Cross yesterday for seal rescues, the first Wally-Video will be on YouTube tomorrow, once editing is done. 

We are excited where 2021 will get us, thank you for being part of our journey. 

Naude & Katja & The OCN Team