Senegal: Manatee necropsy in Bamboung

Just after I left for Guinea-Bissau, Tomas got a report of a dead manatee in central Senegal at Bamboung marine protected area. Our car was in the shop for repair, but Tomas was undaunted... he rented a car and drove through the night to get to Bamboung to do a necropsy and collect samples with the local EcoGuards. This was another great opportunity for us to train local people in manatee sampling techniques, and they were all very interested to learn.

The carcass was an adult male manatee that appears to have died of natural causes (no actual cause of death was found, but there was no sign of hunting, and the carcass was found in a protected area where no hunting exists).

Tomas took genetics and hair samples from the carcass which we'll use to add to our population database, and for studying African manatee diet.

The local guys got creative rolling the carcass onto it's belly in order to take accurate length measurements

Getting ready to take total length measurement. The manatee was 380 cm, one of the biggest ever recorded for Senegal! The only bigger measurement (400 cm) was taken on a carcass near San Louis, Senegal that was reported by Depuy and Maigret in 1978.

 The entire group posed with Tomas and the manatee ear bone he removed from the skull, which will allow us to determine the age of the manatee.

After the necropsy, the EcoGuards offered to show Tomas 6 of the local springs where manatees are regularly seen drinking freshwater. There are over 20 known springs in this area, and we hope to further document their locations and manatee use in the near future.

Great work guys!!

Guinea-Bissau: Orango

My three Spanish colleagues from CBD-Habitat arrived in Bissau late night on May 20. Pablo and Mercedes work primarily with Mediterranean Monk seals in Mauritania, and they were joined by Victor, an “animal capture specialist” from the Spanish Ministry of the Environment who primarily works with birds of prey. The next day we took the capture nets they had brought from Spain to be fitted with buoys and lead lines so they would float correctly in the water. They had bought nets used by soccer goalies in Europe, so the mesh was not as thick as what we usually use for manatee captures, but it seemed durable enough. We searched out a local fisherman who told us he could have the nets ready the next morning.  

On May 22 I left Bissau in a car with Mercedes, Aissa, and most of our gear, while the guys went back to the fisherman to pick up the nets. We drove for about an hour and met our boat at a small coastal hotel southwest of Bissau. Unfortunately the guys were held up for several hours because when they went to get the nets, they weren’t done yet, even though the fisherman had told them over the phone they were. Classic Africa. In the early afternoon we finally left in our boat loaded down with gear and supplies, headed down a small river and out into the ocean to the Bijagos. I was surprised that as soon as we came out of the river, we could see islands stretched out before us. I had thought the Bijagos would be farther offshore. There are countless tiny islands with only a few trees and rocky shorelines, then a few huge ones with mangroves, palms, baobabs and white sand beaches. We saw lots of pelicans, egrets, herons, Palm Nut Vultures and a few African Fish Eagles along the way, and very few signs of humans.  

 

Loading the boat

 

It took us 6 hours to reach Meneque Island, which is part of the larger Orango Island group. We arrived after dark and then carried all our luggage about 10 minutes up a dirt path to the tiny village of Amupa. Originally we were planning to camp near the spring where we planned to capture manatees, but the local guys from CBD-Habitat (who had come ahead of us from their ecotourism hotel on Orango) had decided they preferred to set up camp in the village. This made life easier for them, but it meant a 45 minute walk to and from the capture site each day with all of our gear, not to mention being awakened at night by loud villagers, grunting pigs walking through camp, and by numerous crowing roosters starting each morning at 4am.

 

Our tent camp in the village

The next morning we headed up to the capture site. To get there we walked through the village, a grove of cashew trees, along the edge of mangroves, across salt flats and small areas of savannah, and finally through tropical palm woods. The walk was beautiful, and every day I saw something new- hippo or monkey tracks, a snake skin, lots of interesting birds.

Mercedes and Aissa getting ready to leave camp with capture gear

 

 

When the tide was high we walked through knee-deep water in many places, but it was cool and refreshing in the intense heat. Photo by M. Munoz

 We got to the spring just before low tide in order to assess how to place the nets. The spring sits in a small cove with only one entrance out to a larger mangrove channel, and the entire cove drains completely empty at each low tide. The single entrance makes it an ideal place to catch manatees, because if we block off the entrance/exit after they swim in to drink (they come most days as the tide is rising), they’ll be trapped. However, a couple things quickly became obvious the first day: although the bottom sediment around the spring itself was hard-packed sand, the edges the cove were extremely deep, thick mud banks. Additionally, despite being told that the water that the water was only waist high at high tide, we discovered that it was much higher. Deep mud coupled with high water meant our plan of having nets around the outer edge of the cove that could be brought in around trapped manatees was simply not going to work, because we would sink in mud in water that was about 9 feet deep. So a new plan was devised to affix nets around the edge to trees and poles, which would remove any possibility of manatees escaping through the mangroves, then continue with our plan to have someone at the entrance hiding in a tree to pull the net closed after manatees swam in. Once trapped, we would use a smaller net to surround the manatees inside the cove and bring them to shore (which was actually a 7 foot high embankment, so Victor set up a ratchet system to pull them up a ramp to the cleared area where we could do health assessments and attach tags).

 

Getting ready to set poles for nets on the first day

The blind and embankment as seen from inside the cove, low tide. Photo by P. de Larrinoa

 We set to work, but attaching the nets around the edge was an arduous task in all that deep mud, and it took 12 of us 4 full days of work. We went back to camp every day covered in mud and completely exhausted. The tide rose so much that it went over the tops of our nets, so we had to add a second tier in some places. And since we realized the water would be too deep for people to stand in, Victor decided to bury the smaller net around the spring itself (a net within a net), with lines to shore so that we could hopefully pull the manatee in. We also got kayaks from the ecotourism lodge to use to help handle the smaller net and to spook any manatees that didn’t swim near the spring towards it to be caught.

 

Setting up nets was a muddy business!

 

Pablo up to his thighs in mud! Photo by M. Munoz.

Placing a second tier of net above the high tide line. Photo by A. Regalla.

The cove at low tide with nets finally set up, day 4. Photo by P. de Larrinoa

High tide in the cove, checking nets by kayak. Photo by M. Munoz.

We set up the tags and I readied all the biomedical sampling supplies. 

The group watches a video of manatee captures in Senegal.

 Discussion of capture and sample collection protocols. Photo by M. Munoz.

Finally on the 5^thday we started quietly waiting at the site for manatees to come into the spring. Previous observations by the two local guys who have been documenting manatee use of the spring every day for the past few weeks showed that they come in as much as 2 hours before high tide, or three hours after. So we got there bright and early, and put Camino, our strongest guy, in the tree at the cove entrance, ready to pull the net shut after manatees swam in. Unfortunately, he never got the chance. After all the time we had to spend readying the site, we only had 4 days left to try to catch manatees, and they never came in the spring. We waited and waited, sitting quietly in the intense heat and humidity each day, getting bitten by bugs and biding the time taking turns watching for manatees from the blind at the edge of the cove, reading, sleeping, and playing cards.

Setting a camera trap to record if manatees enter the spring. CBD-Habitat set up camera traps all around the cove.

 View of the cove from inside the blind. Photo by P. de Larrinoa.

But I think all of our disturbance in the area spooked them, and they just went to another place to drink. There seem to be countless springs in this part of Africa, from central Senegal all the way to Guinea. In some places in Senegal there are over 20 known springs in close proximity, so it’s easy to imagine manatees going elsewhere. I wish more preparation could’ve been done by my colleagues before our trip to understand the capture site and prepare- we had discussed via email that they should out up nets a week in advance of our arrival to give the manatees time to adjust to the changes, but everything was very last minute, and it just didn’t happen. I still believe it’s a good place to try to capture manatees because there are very few places where one can enclose them in a natural cove.       

We had to give up because the Spaniards had booked flights home, so we had to return to Bissau. The final day we went over to Orango Parque Hotel, the eco-lodge run by CBD-Habitat, to drop off gear for next time and to spend the night. On the way in the boat, I saw a big manatee surface and dive (sorry, no photo, it happened too quickly for me to grab my camera). The eco-lodge is beautiful and we discussed my doing a manatee training workshop there in the future for IBAP field staff.

Even though we didn’t catch any manatees on this trip, it was good to finally see the site after 3 years of trying to get here, and to meet so many enthusiastic people. We hope to try again next year, and we know this kind of work takes a lot of time and patience- only in Florida is it more or less guaranteed to catch manatees when research teams to go out. In Cuba they recently finally tagged their first manatees after 10 years of trying, and in Costa Rica no manatees have ever been captured, despite 3 years of attempts, so we’ll just have to keep at it. And I’m not leaving empty-handed, because Aissa gave me a manatee sample from a carcass they found several years ago, which I’ll use for genetics analysis to add to my growing population database for the species.

Arrival in Guinea-Bissau

On Friday morning I flew from Dakar to Bissau, which was a short 40 minute flight, but as usual in Africa the process at the airport beforehand took several hours, most of which I spent with my fellow passengers standing on the bus that eventually transported us from the terminal to the plane. They loaded us onto the bus and then left us there for an hour while the airport staff loaded the plane. In classic Africa fashion, some passengers got annoyed with the delay and disembarked the bus to wander around the tarmac, yell at the driver, and head back into the terminal to buy food. Most of the passengers were a Christian group returning to Guinea-Bissau from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, so when we finally boarded the plane they began to sing hymns and chant “Obrigado Deus” (Thank You God) accompanied by clapping for the entire flight.

As I looked out the window, it was easy to see why Guinea-Bissau seems to be a manatee paradise: the entire coastline is a series of wide rivers and mangrove channels, apparently sparsely populated by humans. As we got closer to Bissau many rice fields were evident, and previous reports tell of manatees raiding flooded rice fields at night, which obviously does not endear them to the farmers (this is also a big problem in Sierra Leone).

A close-up of the mangrove canals in northern Guinea-Bissau

When I arrived in Bissau I discovered that although my equipment was there, the bag with my clothes had not made it from Dakar. Apparently about half the baggage wasn’t loaded onto the plane, and we were told it would come on Sunday night (I’m not sure whether or not to believe the airlines, but I have no choice but to wait and see). Fortunately I had a few extra t-shirts in the bag with my equipment and I was able to buy a few toiletries at a shop.

I was met at the airport by Tome, the local CBD-Habitat employee, and Aissa, who works for IBAP, the Guinea-Bissau equivalent of USFWS. They drove me to the IBAP office and introduced me all around- IUCN has offices there as well as several other collaborating organizations. Both Tome and Aissa will be part of the manatee capture team and are very enthusiastic. After IBAP they brought me to a very pleasant hotel where I settled in for the weekend. The rest of the Spanish team from CBD-Habitat arrives on Monday, so I have time to catch up on other work and visit with my friend Betania, who I worked with in Angola a few years ago and who is now working here with IBAP’s sea turtle program. Since Betania’s work is focused in the Bijagos Archipelago, where we’re headed to try to capture manatees, she was able to tell me a lot about the habitat and the realities of working out there.

Bissau is a small city, and actually it feels rather more like a small town than a national capital. The buildings are mostly colonel era but reasonably well-maintained, and brightly painted in oranges, greens, yellows, and pinks. It’s hot and dusty here now, although the rains are due to start any minute, so the air has a feeling of heavy humidity. From my hotel’s rooftop tiki bar I can see the main Canal do Geba that drains out to the ocean not far from here, and where we’ll boat out to Bijagos.    

Brief Visit to Senegal

I've now been in Senegal for 10 days, and tomorrow I continue south to Guinea-Bissau. While here in Dakar I had a productive meeting with Captain Abba Sonko at the Water and Forestry to discuss future plans. Captain Sonko was the person who submitted the proposal to CITES to up-list the African manatee to Appendix I, so he's very proud that it succeeded, and we're now both working with the Species Survival Network to implement activities to try to increase protection for manatees. In addition I showed him some of my preliminary genetics and age determination results for Senegal. I'm sure he's going to be a great partner for my long-term work here.

Tomas and I also went south to Saly for a couple days to check on the progress of our future base there, and I met some very enthusiastic people who are interested for me to do manatee outreach programs with school children there, so I look forward to starting that when I come back next year. Now I'm just packing up the crazy amount of equipment I need to bring to Guinea-Bissau for captures. Hopefully I'll have internet for at least the first few days so I can post more before we take off to the remote Bijagos.

Time To Go!!

It's been a busy spring, I've just finished my very last class for my PhD and a lot of lab work for both my genetics and stable isotope projects, and now it's time to get back out to fieldwork in Africa! On Sunday I fly to Senegal where I'll spend a couple weeks and will have some meetings about project sites there (the Senegal Ministry of the Environment has pledged some financial support and they're trying to leverage more, which Tomas and I are very excited about). In mid-May I'll travel to Guinea-Bissau to join my Spanish colleagues in an effort that has been over 3 years in planning- we will attempt to capture and satellite tag manatees in the Bijagos Archipelago. This will be the first time anyone has studied African manatees in a marine ecosystem, so all our fingers are crossed that we'll catch a few. This is where we'll be working:

We are all aware of the difficulties we face... just getting all the equipment, people, and camping supplies out to the very remote capture site will be challenging. And capture efforts in other similar remote places such as Costa Rica, Panama, and Cuba have had teams that have made multiple capture attempts over many years and were not successful (in Cuba they just tagged their first manatees last year, after something like10 years of trying! And in Costa Rica they have not yet been successful despite 3 capture attempts).

We'll be working at a spring in a mangrove channel that manatees regularly use to drink freshwater. Manatees are seen in these islands year round, so we hope to discover if they live there permanently, feeding on the extensive seagrass beds and depending entirely on the springs, or do they travel back and forth to the mainland 25 miles or more away to use the river systems there? I also hope to collect genetic and other biological samples since previous results have shown that manatees here are very genetically diverse, and I'd like to analyze their diet.

So I'm packing up, and will post my adventures as often as I can!

It's Official! African Manatees are now CITES Appendix I

Not surprisingly, after the CITES COP overwhelmingly reached a consensus to uplist African manatees from Appendix II to Appendix I, the proposal was quickly approved at the CITES plenary session last week. So it will be official in approximately 90 days. What does this mean? It will ban international commercial trade, but in reality not many African manatees are legally traded (about 19 have gone to aquariums in Asia over the past decade). I dearly hope this measure will bring attention to all the poaching of the species and lead to crackdowns in illegal trade of manatee meat and parts in African countries, but the skeptic in me is concerned that without dedicated funds, not much will happen. The good news is governments in many African countries support protecting their manatees (13 country reps signed a declaration stating they will work towards specific objectives to decrease illegal hunting, improve manatee habitat altered by human development, and promote research, conservation and educational outreach), but I hope we can keep the good will and momentum going. And work on fundraising! I plan to continue my collaboration with the enegetic folks at the Species Survival Network in order to start working on those declaration objectives.

For researchers such as myself, a CITES Appendix I designation also means we'll need additional permits to export/import manatee scientific specimens for analysis and educational purposes, and it will be more difficult overall. It adds another level to the dizzying number of permits I already need to keep up with, and I'm not complaining, but it can be frustrating to work so hard to do the right thing, and then see poachers openly selling manatee meat in markets. It'll take alot of work and a long time to change the way things are, but I'm happy that I have some very dedicated African colleagues to work alongside. Here's hoping the new CITES rule will make a real difference in African manatee conservation.

CITES COP16 African Manatee Consensus‏

On Wednesday at the CITES Conference of Parties (COP16) in Bangkok, Thailand, the range states reached a consensus to uplist the African manatee to CITES Appendix I. This is actually a bit surprising given the lack of population and illegal trade data that exists for African manatees, but I think it speaks well of the interest of countries around the world wishing to protect our favorite species! If interested, you can read a blog post written by a colleague from Species Survival Network, who is attending the meeting. The consensus will not be official until after the COP16 plenary meeting next week, but it should encounter little difficulty being adopted since there has already been a consensus. I hope this status change will translate into actual protection on the ground for manatees in Africa, and not just become another rule that is never enforced. I don't mean to be a pessimist, but there are already so many laws meant to protect African manatees, yet almost no enforcement anywhere in Africa. I also hope this new CITES designation will also raise awareness about the species around the world, since most people I encounter don't even know there are manatees in Africa. There's been some good reporting from the CITES COP16, see the following links:

Born Free Foundation
The Guardian
National Geographic