34 Cape Fur Seals have been rescued from entanglement so far. We are mainly dealing with the usual suspects: discarded fishing line, packaging straps and ropes, no surprises there. About half of our rescue patrols were unsuccessful either because we did not see any entanglements, or because the animals were too close to the ocean and ran away, too fast for even Denzil. We are noticing a slight increase in entanglement sightings and we are expecting many seals in need of sharp scissors.
We have a very exciting announcement: we're heading North! The Namibian Ministry of Fisheries is allowing us to tag along on a 6 day familiarisation trip to seal colonies up North, all the way up to Cape Fria at the Angolan border (map below). This trip will be conducted to collect scat samples, to do drone surveys and to record size and weight of this year's pups. We will be allowed to do seal rescues along the way and we are very grateful that we can show our work to our government officials. They have always expressed support, but they have never seen us in action. On this trip, we will have access to some of the most remote and restricted parts of Namibia. We will be off the grid for a few days and only reachable via sat phone.
