The OCN rescue team has returned from our first excursion up the Namibian Coast! We had the privilege to be invited by the Namibian Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources to join six government officials on an expedition up the Skeleton Coast National Park to assist with drone surveys, scat collection and pup sampling at four major colonies North of Walvis Bay, and to show our seal disentanglement work. Scat collections are a smelly affair, but a lot of valuable information can be gathered regarding their diets, and the movements of seals, based on what they are eating.

We travelled for six days and set up wild camps in different spots each night, as there is no proper infrastructure close by. No running water, no electricity, no facilities, no cell coverage. We started at Cape Cross and rescued a seal pup from a packaging strap, but we did not find any other seals in need for the rest of the morning. We took it as a good sign, as Cape Cross is usually a hotspot for entanglements. It could be that the Corona crisis has lead to less commercial fishing and less recreational beach goers, which could have had a positive effect on the well-being of our seal population.

We moved on to Mowe Bay, about 500 km away from home. The resident seal colony at Mowe Bay is similar in size to the one at Cape Cross. We found a big female seal with a very deep cut around her neck. We removed a very strong, perfectly spliced loop of white rope stuck from her neck, the same kind of rope we found on two additional seals that day. 

Entanglements were only a small part of our mission. Together with the ministry team we put our three new "pup nets" to the test. Little pups are strong and fast, and it is quite a tiring process getting 50 of them caught at each colony, then into nets, then onto the scale and finally released into the sea. In our "off" time, we quickly rescued a few more seals from entanglement. It was a bittersweet moment - the excitement about being able to help those remote seal colonies was overshadowed by the realisation that our animals will never be safe from plastic pollution and ocean rubbish, even 500km away from the closest harbour town. 

Seals at the Cape Fria colony are spread out along 10km of open beach, making entanglement monitoring very difficult.  The existing tracks made it hard to get near the seals, and the animals are not used to humans at all, they were extremely skittish and quick to flee into the ocean. We could only catch one sub adult male seal on some rocks with an extremely bad cut around his neck caused by a thin piece of fishing line. More entangled seals were seen, but sadly all were in positions where they could not be caught. We did not find any more seal colonies further North than Cape Fria. 

Our evenings were spent around the camp fire with everyone swopping stories and tricks of the trade. The officials from MFMR have been dealing with seals for many years, and provided some incredibly insightful information to the OCN team. It was a memorable journey and we are grateful that we were allowed to join this expedition. We will share some of the rescue videos over the next few days on social media. 

So what is our conclusion after this trip? We learned that our Cape Fur Seal colonies seem to be strong and in good health. We were on a tight schedule, we would have liked to have more time for seal rescues, but we appreciate the fact that we could assist with essential data collection, which is important for monitoring and research. We hope we will be allowed to go back particularly to Mowe Bay, we see a lot of potential entanglements there. 

We would like to express our sincere gratitude for the opportunity to be invited and assist our government in their important work towards sustainability and conservation. We hope it is the beginning of a successful collaboration.

We are planning a live YouTube Q&A for this upcoming Sunday 28 March, focusing on this excursion and current development. We will announce it in a separate (very short) newsletter once the time has been set. Spoiler alert: if all goes according to the current plan, there might be a very familiar and beloved frenchman back in Namibia!!! 

Thank you for your ongoing support. 

Naude & Katja & The OCN Team