He is not one of our rescues, but he is our favorite seal at Cape Cross. Please meet Snaggles! He is a young Cape Fur Seal, born in December 2021, and he lives with his mum at Cape Cross with a few hundred thousand friends. We have seen Snaggles on our last 4 trips to Cape Cross.

He was born with a massive underbite, but he is doing really well. He is chubby and healthy and he does not seem to have problems drinking from his mum. He might be eating a bit of fish here and there, but we will keep a close eye on him when his mum has the next baby later this year, when she won't allow him to drink from her anymore. We will make sure he stays around for as long as possible.  

We had our first big day at Cape Cross with 20 rescues in one morning. It took us a while to work out that number because we found 21 entanglements in our bag. We scrutinised every single rescue video, but we could not see rescue #21. Either we picked up rubbish from the beach, or we left an old entanglement in the bag, or there is no video footage of that rescue, we simply do not know. We try to be as accurate as possible, all our data is made available for any scientist or journalist who wants access, but sometimes we have so many rescues in a row that we lose track. Our rescue count must be close to 300 by now for 2022, we will have a better idea once we have processed all footage. 
Our YouTube channel is very busy at the moment with lots of new views and subscribers, which is fantastic. We get many emails with the same two questions at the moment: better tools and drones. 
1. Tools: we have boxes full of great rescue tools. The Leatherman Raptors are our first choice. Any rescue tool will jam up in sea water and sand. The tool is very strong and durable. Leatherman makes sure we have as many spares as we need. We appreciate all the offers to send us equipment, but we are okay for now. This is NOT a sponsored post :-)
2. Drone: We have a wonderful drone that we use every once in a while. We are allowed to fly the drone under our research permit, but we are not allowed to publish the footage. Drones are usually forbidden in National Parks because of poaching, we are lucky we are exempted from that rule. We respect the situation and will not post any of our very beautiful footage. Binoculars and spotting scopes are more effective for us to spot entangled seals anyways. 

We are taking a rest day today, it is East weather (strong and hot wind) and there are very few seals on the beaches. We will be ready for them when they come back to shore. We have reached half of our target of 600 rescues for the year, at least 300 to go. 
Thank you for watching and sharing our posts and videos, each seal rescue creates much needed public awareness because of your help. 

Katja & Naude & the OCN Team