This is a sad newsletter.
On a normal day of seal patrols and seal rescues, Naude came across a large amount of dead seal pups. Seals should not give birth before the middle of November, but it is not unusual to see prematurely born seal pups earlier in the year. It is a natural event and happens when pregnant seals do not have enough fat reserves to carry a foetus full term.
Premature seal pups cannot survive, they are too young, and they don't have the protection from "creche colonies" later in the year. They are not fully developed. It's always sad to watch as seal mothers "mourn" their babies and often stick around for a while, or carry them around or try to get them to come to life. Birds and jackals take care of the carcasses as part of the ecosystem.
This year seems to be different. We do not just record a few cases, we see hundreds, thousands premature births. The beaches are full of little black lumps. Cape Cross and other seal colonies in Namibia are also recording higher numbers than usual, but not as grave as Pelican Point.
There could be many different reasons for this mass die off. The most probable one is starvation, the fish stocks might have moved too far away from Pelican Point. Our seals look a bit thin, it could likely be caused by a lack of food. Other seal colonies look much better, the seals are fatter and they don't record the same amount of premature pups. Other reasons could be toxins or diseases. We have been talking to Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources, they are aware of the problem and are conducting biopsies and tests. We are assisting the authorities wherever we can, hopefully they will have some answers soon.
There is nothing that can be done to stop this tragedy. It has happened before in 1994, when starvation led to the loss of roughly a third of our seal population. Below is a picture taken with our drone to show the full extent of the situation. Each red circle marks a dead pup.
