In Search of 'Mamiwata'

2012-01-27T10:26:00.012-05:00

West African Manatee Network Activities

Over the past few months I've received several updates from my former trainees, who are now actively starting manatee research and conservation efforts in their home countries, despite many challenges. Here are some highlights of their efforts:

Mali:

In central Mali, manatee researcher Soumaïla Berthe is starting surveys to learn about manatees in the Bani River, a 775 km long tributary of the Niger River. Berthe attended the training workshop I led in Djenné, Mali in 2010, and he was one of the most dedicated and enthusiastic members of the group. He's been fascinated with manatees for years, and had educated himself about them online since there are few other resources in Mali. I was also able to visit his study area near San when I was in Mali (see posting from November 18, 2010). With no funding for his manatee work (his official job is a regional director for the Niger River Basin Authority), Berthe goes out in his spare time to start surveys, train others, and build a local manatee sightings network that is creating and maintaining a database of known manatee use areas and year round sightings. So far Berthe has documented a new dam on the Bani that has changed the pattern of seasonal waterflow and is likely effecting manatees ability to access important feeding habitat, plus he has recorded known seasonal use locations reported by fisherman, and collected samples of manatee bone and feces for genetics and stable isotope analyses. He has 5 volunteers working with him, and I am very impressed with his energy and determination.

Berthe (with binoculars) surveys the river with his colleague Lassina Diarra. Photo courtesy of Soumaïla Berthe.

Berthe and Lassina check out a piece of manatee skull found by villagers living on the Bani River. Photo courtesy of Soumaïla Berthe.
Côte d'Ivoire:

Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast in English) has faced years of civil war, and the past two years have been especially difficult because of fighting after President Gagbo lost the last election but refused to step down and allow Ouattara (the winner) to assume the presidency. Additionally, in 2009 Dr. Akoi Kouadio, who had been leading a manatee research program in Ivory Coast for almost 30 years, passed away after an illness. The non-profit organization Akoi worked for dropped his project after his death, leaving his staff and programs with no way to continue.

Since then his former protégé, Dr. Kouame Djaha, has been trying to find a way to continue the manatee sightings network and educational outreach started by Akoi. Kouame attended the training workshop in Djenné, Mali and I was able to donate a full set of field equipment to his research efforts. Kouame reports that now that the government has settled down a bit, he and several colleagues have made contact with members of the former sightings network, and people tell them they still want to protect the manatee. Under Akoi, the project had ended all hunting in a lagoon system where 100,000 people live, which is a huge achievement! Kouame needs funds to restart their work, and for now he is working as a botanist at a university.

This is a photo I took of Kouame during the training workshop in Mali. His shirt says "Don't kill the manatees" and was one of the educational tools Akoi's group used to end hunting in Fresco Lagoon.Niger:

Manatee researcher Boureima Boubacar, who also attended training in Djenné, Mali in 2010, has now started manatee surveys in the Niger River in Niger. He's working to reactivate a manatee sighting network that was set up years ago near W National Park (so named because the Niger River literally forms a "W" in this area. Test your geographical knowledge and see if you can find it on Google Earth! Hint: it's south of the capital of Niamey and north of the border with Benin). During his surveys Boureima took environmental data and talked to people about how often they see manatees. He hopes to raise funds to continue his work.

Boureima (in orange) and a colleague discuss their data during a field survey. Photo courtesy of Boureima Boubacar.
Boureima using a depth sounder with digital thermometer donated to him by my grants that provide field equipment to African researchers. This device collects accurate water depth, as well as water and air temperature data... it's extremely useful in Africa's muddy rivers. Photo courtesy of Boureima Boubacar.
Senegal:

At Lac de Guiers, a huge lake in northern Senegal, Tomas Diagne (who is also my husband) has been working with the community and the government for many years to establish a wildlife reserve to protect manatees, an endemic species of freshwater turtle (Adanson's Mud Turtle, Pelusios adansoni) and many species of water birds. This past Fall the first signs designating the Tocc Tocc Refuge were erected, including a map of the refuge.

The local crew assembled for a group photo after putting up two signs. Bouys will soon also mark refuge boundaries from the lake side. Photo courtesy of Tomas Diagne.
A fisherman pulls up abandoned net full of aquatic plants within Tocc Tocc Reserve during a cleanup organized by Tomas and the local community. Photo courtesy of Tomas Diagne.
Tomas raised funds and has purchased a fiberglass boat for surveys and reserve monitoring, which they plan to start this year with a team of staff from local villages. He has also received equipment donations from Save the Manatee Club including a trolling motor, life jackets, a digital camera, a tent, and a desktop computer. Training, equipment and uniforms will be provided to refuge staff so that they can both enforce protection of the reserve, as well as collect scientific data on the manatees and turtles. A committee made up of chiefs and elders from each of the surrounding villages will oversee management of the reserve, ensuring that they can protect the wildlife and reap the benefits as it grows into an ecotourism site.

As I get more reports from other network members I will continue to post them to show more of the terrific efforts that are underway for West African manatees!

2012-01-25T21:13:00.002-05:00

Persistence pays off!!

Happy news! After 13 months of working with colleagues in Mali to get an export permit for manatee samples I collected there in November 2010 (which have since been added to by my colleagues) we finally got it! It's amazing how long it can take to push simple paperwork through government bureaucracy, and I have learned that patience is definitely required. The permits are required so that I can legally ship the samples (which include bone, tissue, and even manatee feces, which will be used for genetics, age determination, and stable isotope analyses) to the lab in Florida. Once the analyses are complete, I'll share the results back to my colleagues in Mali in the hope that the results will help them make informed management and conservation decisions for manatees. Now the next step is shipping... which has it's own set of challenges from Mali!

2012-01-25T20:00:00.007-05:00

Kamla's Florida Training Adventure

As I mentioned in my last post, Aristide Kamla from Cameroon came to Florida for 3 weeks of training this past November. Thanks to tremendous help and enthusiasm from my Florida manatee colleagues at the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission's Marine Mammal Pathobiology Lab (FWC/MMPL), the USGS Sirenia Project, Sea to Shore Alliance, Lowry Park Zoo, and Homosassa Springs State Park, Kamla was able to experience almost all aspects of manatee research in his short visit. The idea was for him to gain as much practical, hands on experience with manatees as possible. In Africa, manatees are very difficult to study and we can only rarely collect samples, but it's important for researchers to be able to know what to do when the rare opportunities arise. In his 3 weeks in Florida, Kamla was able to participate in more training activies than I would be able to provide in several years in Africa.

As an aside, I call Aristide by his last name, Kamla, because that's how he always signs his emails, so for a long time I thought that was his first name! Now it's stuck as my nickname for him and he's ok with it, so there you go.

Just after arriving in Florida, Kamla participated in wild manatee captures and health assessments led by USGS in Crystal River. USGS has been studying the manatees in Crystal River for over 30 years, and their current study is looking at baseline health parameters of the manatees that return to this natural hotspring area every winter. My husband Tomas and I also participated. Photo courtesy of Susan Butler, USGS.
Here Kamla helps to carefully roll a manatee so that USGS photo identification photos can be taken of its ventral (belly) side. He also learned how to take standardized measurements, collect genetics samples and safely pull captured manatees into shore in nets. Photo courtesy of USGS.
Once their health assessments are complete, the manatees are released back into the warm water. Photo courtesy of USGS.
This is a group shot of some of the many (almost 100!) people who took part in the captures. Another benefit of Kamla's participation was getting to meet and talk with manatee researchers from all over Florida. Photo courtesy of USGS.
After captures USGS researchers, including manatee telemetry guru Jim Reid, took Kamla snorkeling with the manatees, so he was able to swim with them and see their natural behavior. Photo courtesy of USGS.
Kamla with the manatee sanctuary sign at Crystal River. Photo courtesy of USGS.
Next, Kamla accompanied Sea to Shore Alliance manatee trackers Jessica Koelsch and Melody Fisher on two separate field outings to track tagged manatees. Sea to Shore is responsible for tracking rehabilitated Florida manatees after they have been released from captivity, to make sure they successfully re-acclimate to the wild. Here he drives the boat while listening to the VHF radio receiver for the beeps emitted by the tag. Photo courtesy of Melody Fisher.

Listening for a manatee who was feeding in the floating vegetation close by.... Photo courtesy of Melody Fisher.

Next Kamla headed back to the Marine Mammal Pathobiology Lab (MMPL) in St. Petersburg to spend several days learning how to do detailed necropsies on dead manatees. Aside from determining the cause of death, MMPL staff also conduct studies on many aspects of manatee physiology. Here Kamla examines muscle and fat layers. Photo courtesy of FWC.

Kamla with MMPL staff Trevor Gerlach, Brandon Bassett, and Anna Panike. Photo courtesy of FWC.
Kamla also went out with MMPL staff Anna to collect a manatee carcass, which is alot easier when you have a truck with a winch attached! Photo courtesy of FWC.
Another day Kamla accompanied FWC staff Kane Rigney & Andy Garrett to Lowry Park Zoo, to conduct a health assessment on a manatee that was about to be released back to the wild. By this time he was getting pretty good at rolling them over! Photo courtesy of FWC.
Kamla watches as an ultrasound reading is taken, which shows the width of the manatee's fat layer and gives a good indication of overall health. In Florida manatees need a good fat layer to help protect them through cold winters. Photo courtesy of FWC.

Finally, Kamla spent 3 days at Homosassa Springs State Park working with their captive manatees. After all his hands on training, Kamla attended the Society of Marine Mammalogy conference in Tampa (more details on that below). He was the first African researcher my project has sponsored for training in the USA and I'm really grateful to all the people who gave their time to teach him! It took alot of logistical coordination to make it happen, and I'd also like to thank Susan Kahraman of Sea to Shore Alliance for all her help setting up Kamla's flights, local transportation, and lodging. He's now back in Africa continuing his research in Cameroon and plans to apply to universities to study for his PhD. Kamla's goal is to be the first Marine Biology university professor in his country, and I'm betting he will be!

Based on the success of Kamla's training, next month I'll sponsor a second researcher, Dawda Saine of the Gambia here in Florida. And I'm already thinking about my next training work in Africa, which will take place in Guinea-Bissau in May. Stay tuned!

2012-01-02T11:46:00.013-05:00

Fall 2011 Recap

Happy New Year! Finally I have time to catch up with myself after a whirlwind Fall. I'm happy to report I survived my toughest semester of my PhD program, which will now make studying for and taking my qualifying exams this spring seem a like piece of cake :-) I learned alot in my Phylogenetics and Biochemistry clases that will help my research, but I'm also very glad they're FINISHED!! In addition to school, there were a few other project achievements this Fall:

- My collaborator Katie Brill has aged the first 16 West African manatee earbones from samples I collected and imported from four countries. Earbones are used for aging because manatees lose and replace their teeth throughout their lives as they wear them out (think of a conveyor belt from the back of the jaw to the front... the teeth move forward as the ones in front of them wear down and fall out). This is the first time the aging technique (which requires slicing a very thin section of earbone with a diamond saw and counting the rings, just like in a tree) has been used for this species. The ages ranged from 12 to 39 years old (39 is very old for a wild manatee!) and this information will be used along with genetic samples collected from the same individuals to give us a picture of the lives of manatees in different populations. We continue to try to get more earbones from other countries, so we can expand our research; I also plan to use these and other bones to do stable isotope analyses to determine what the manatees eat. We'll publish our results in a year or two, once we have more data.

Here's a photo of a manatee earbone slice... how many rings can you count? The answer is at the bottom of this post. (Photo courtesy of Katie Brill)

- In November I sponsored Cameroonian manatee researcher Aristide Kamla for 3 weeks of training in Florida. Aristide worked for almost a year to fundraise in order to make this trip, and in addition to the stipend I gave him (thanks to the generosity of my grants for training African researchers) he received a student travel award to attend the Society of Marine Mammalogy conference in Tampa (see below), and matched both awards with several thousand dollars of his own funds. My grants also allowed me to outfit Aristide with basic field equipment he needs for his manatee surveys in Cameroon, including binoculars, a GPS unit, a depth sounder with digital thermometer, a tape measure, a drybag to safely store his equipment, and manatee posters for educational outreach in his country. He's an impressive and extremely motivated young man, and I'll write more about his experiences in Florida in a separate post shortly.

Aristide and me with some of his field equipment donated by this project

- In late November I attended the biennial Society of Marine Mammalogy conference in Tampa, FL where I gave 3 presentations (1 oral and 2 posters) on different aspects of my ongoing research. The spoken presentation, "First Satellite Tagging of the West African Manatee" was given at the Sirenian Workshop and reported manatee rescues and satellite tagging I did in the Senegal River in 2009 in collaboration with Oceanium Dakar (a Senegalese NGO) and CBD-Habitat (a Spanish NGO). The two posters reported on my work to build the researcher network for the WA manatee (see below & link in menu at right), and a poster (lead author was Jonathan Perez Rivera) on our rehabilitation of Victor, the orphan manatee in Gabon.

Aristide and I presenting our posters at the marine mammal conference

-The conference was also an excellent opportunity to meet with other researchers to discuss future collaborations, and I'm excited to report that Dr. Miriam Marmontel (who first developed the manatee earbone aging technique) will join Katie's and my earbone research. I also met with a Mexican manatee researcher to discuss collaborating on manatee tooth wear (which helps us determine the types of plants they are eating) and with others to discuss WA manatee morphometrics (the study of manatee size and shape via measurements, which will help us determine if there are differences between populations in Africa) and future fundraising efforts. So all in all, it was a very successful meeting!

- In December the Columbus Zoo Conservation Fund awarded their 5th consecutive grant to this project, and I'm honored to have them as my longest term supporter of my West African manatee research! Thank you so much for your commitment to me and to this work Columbus Zoo!

So it was a very productive 4 months! Next up: aside from studying for 3 months for my qualifying exams and taking 2 more classes, I'll sponsor Gambian manatee researcher Dawda Saine in Florida for training in February, I hope to finish and submit 2 manuscripts to scientific journals, and I'll be planning my next field season in Africa (Senegal, and hopefully Guinea-Bissau and Gambia). And I'll try to be better at posting news here more often! I wish you all a wonderful, healthy and happy 2012!!

Earbone age answer= 16 years

2011-10-10T10:12:00.017-04:00

Coming out of the Black Hole

Sorry for the disappearing act! At the end of July I returned to the USA, and in the end of August I started more classes towards my PhD at the University of Florida. This is my toughest semester yet- I'm taking Phylogenetics, Bio Chemisty, and a Physiology seminar plus continuing my job fulltime. It's challenging to say the least, and I'm really looking forward to finishing the semester in December! This is my last semester of full classes, then in January I start studying for my qualifying exams, which I'll take next April. There are many days where it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I do think this will all help my research for West African manatees in the long run, so it's worth it. The classes I'm taking now will certainly benefit my genetics research for the species.

In other news, as of September 1 the Wildlife Conservation Society in Gabon decided they could no longer care for Victor, the orphan manatee calf there. Those of us directly involved with Victor's care decided we couldn't stand by and watch him be abandoned, so 4 of us (myself, Dr. Rich Parnell, Aimee Sanders, and Dr. Ken Cameron) took over responsibility for Victor's care and fundraising. This has been hard to do on top of everything else we're doing in ourregular jobs, but we quickly put the word out that we needed help and have had very generous responses from Save the Manatee Club, whose donors bought 100 bags of milk formula plus vitamins for Victor, and Georgia Aquarium, who recently gave a $7000 donation for his care!
We thank both organizations for their incredible generosity which is a great start in allowing us to give Victor the extra year of care he needs before he can hopefully be returned to the wild. As of last week Victor weighs 61 kg, so he is continuing to thrive. We are still fundraising because his food, shipping of his supplies to Gabon, paying his Gabonese caretaker staff, veterinary costs and other maintenance costs are over $38,000 per year. If you are able to make a donation, please click here. (Under the Program drop-down menu, please select West African Manatee Research). All donations go directly to Victor! We appreciate the help very much!

I'd also like to thank two of my project funders, the USFWS Wildlife Without Borders program and the Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund, who both recently awarded my project renewal grants! This is the 4th consecutive year Disney has supported my project and the 3rd year for USFWS, so I am very grateful to be able to continue building the African researcher regional network and to continue the genetics and other research that will give us lots of important new information for the species.

The biennial Society of Marine Mammalogy conference is coming up next month, so I'm now preparing my presentations- a talk and two scientific posters, which I'll post here after the conference. I'm also preparing for the arrival in Florida of Cameroonian manatee researcher Aristide Kamla, who was awarded a travel grant to attend the conference and present his Masters research on manatees in the Douala-Edea region of Cameroon. Kamla will also receive 2 additional weeks of training while he's here in Florida- in everything from manatee capture techniques, tracking tagged manatees in the wild to necropsies. I'm grateful to my colleagues at Sea to Shore Alliance, USGS, and the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission for providing so many training opportunities for Kamla.

2011-07-22T05:15:00.013-04:00

Congo: Lac Tchimpa and the Lukani River

After paddling down the Ngonogo we traveled to Lac Tchimpa, another tranquil lake with no permanent residents. However, this lake is closer to villages so we did see lots of signs of fishing activity (particularly large hooks set for freshwater turtles). Again the habitat was great for manatees, but none were seen. I did find a small river at the far end of the lake (later I learned it is called the Lukani) that looked promising. The photo below shows Lake Tchimpa shoreline plants that are attractive to manatees: ferns, grasses, and a taro-like plant known as Cryptosperma senegalense.
We were also lucky to get a good view of this male Finfoot duck, which is a common but shy species here. We mostly see them disappearing under bushes as we move along the edge of waterways. (Photo by T. Collins)
We returned a day later to properly kayak and survey the Lukani. It's a very narrow creek, but in places it's 8 feet deep. Numerous fallen trees and other brush blocked the river at various points (although manatees could swim underthem), so we instantly regretted that we'd forgotten a machete. It was obvious from the overgrown brush that no humans had come up this river in a long time.
I found known manatee food plant species I hadn't seen anywhere else in Conkouati (or even in Gabon) and finally I found fresh feeding sign! Fern leaves hanging in the water had been stripped off their stems and and Cryptosperma leaves had been eaten.

As we continued upriver the going got tougher.
Where's the river? Tim is cutting through brush with his small knife in this photo.
After a couple hours we reached a mini lake and heard chimps in the trees nearby. Unfortunately further progress upriver was blocked by a huge log, so we turned back. But at least I have some proof that manatees use this area.
The Lukani was the last survey I had time for before I had to leave the Congo. I'd like to thank Tim and Hilde for their hospitality and all their help with logistics for my surveys. Although I didn't see any manatees myself, my interviews provide local knowledge of where they have been seen recently, and hopefully the tapez tapez fishing can be stopped, for the benefit of all the wildlife in the national park.

I've returned to Gabon for a few days to secure my export permits for the manatee samples I'll bring back to the USA, so my fieldwork is over for the next few months. Next I'll head back to Florida and the lab for sample analysis.

2011-07-18T05:50:00.022-04:00

Congo: Kayaking the Ngongo

Last week my friend Tim (a whale researcher who lives at Conkouati) and I took off on a 3 day trip in search of manatees to lakes and up the Ngongo River north of Conkoauti Lagoon. People on the lagoon told me manatees occur in these more remote areas, so I was eager to go look. Our Congolese boat driver, Christian, works for Conkouati national park and knows these waterways very well.

Boating up the Ngongo River towards Lac Tchibinda on the first day, we passed through raffia palm forest which is full of elephants at this time of year, then moved into more upland tropical forest in the north. It was slow going due to many fallen logs in the river.
Lac Tchibinda is enormous! It took us an entire day to slowly boat around the edges. There are only a few people who live permanently on Lac Tchibinda, although there are a number of camps and people come occasionally to fish.
Overall the habitat is very pristine. Tim saw 4 otters on his morning kayak near our camp, and I found hundreds of duiker tracks (they're like a small deer) on the shore. It's quiet and good manatee habitat, but unfortunately we didn't see any. You can see the waterline on the bottom of the trees in the photo below, which marks the water level rise in the rainy season.
Our peaceful campsite on the lake. It's dry season, so very cool at night.
Ready to kayak in the land of too many tse tse flies! The first morning we went in opposite directions in our kayaks in order to cover more area at first light.
Sunrise view of the lake from the shoreline
I found freshwater mussels and collected samples. They were quite large, about 3 inches long. Now that I've really started looking, it turns out I find shellfish everywhere manatees are reported in Africa.
After the morning kayak we loaded up our motor boat & headed off on a survey around the rest of Lac Tchibinda. At the mouth of a small river that drains into the lake, there was a large grassy area with many species of manatee food plants. A local fisherman I interviewed that day told me he often sees manatees here as well as within the river, and he described mating herds, which was the first report of them I've had at Conkouati. The river was too small to navigate in our motorized boat and we had to keep going to finish Tchibinda and get to the next site, so no time to kayak it that day.
While I checked out the river mouth, Tim caught his first fish of the trip (which was released)
At another small river that drains into the lake we saw elephant tracks... but still no manatees.
After interviewing a local fisherman I wrote up my notes before we continued. People are often less intimidated when I don't take notes as I interview them. (photo by T. Collins).
As we headed from Lac Tchibinda over to the Ngongo River we passed this Graya ornata snake sunning just above the water.
Boating quickly up the Ngongo to reach our camp by sunset. Despite the beautiful scenery, I start to get frustrated when I don't find manatees! (photo by T. Collins).
As we came around one corner, we surprised a female elephant bathing in the river. We also saw and heard many other eles feeding along the banks.
Happy campers part 2: Tim & Christian in the early morning mist of the Ngongo. Tim is just happy that he survived the night without an elephant tromping on his tent!
Early the next morning we kayaked down the Ngongo River. The current is pretty strong, so we were able to mostly drift and look for wildlife. We saw lots of monkeys & chimps, hundreds of hornbills and other birds, and we heard elephants feeding in the brush above us. (photo by T. Collins).
The banks of the river rose about 20-30 feet above the waterline, indicating how much higher the water rises during the rainy season. This whole area floods, and as in other rivers I've surveyed in Africa, it's possible that manatees swim into flooded forests on the rivers edge at that time of year. But now it's the dry season and upriver the vegetation is too far above the waterline for manatees to reach, so I wasn't surprised not to find them here. Further downriver, though, the embankments are not as high (the river gets wider & deeper) and manatees could use that area in all seasons.
This is just another photo to give a sense of the gorgeous forest habitat. (photo by T. Collins).
At least we had a beautiful kayak trip and saw some cool animals. This is a Great Blue Turaco, one of several we saw as we paddled the river. They are about the size of a hawk. It's hard to photograph them so I was lucky.
We also saw these pretty purple flowers that reminded me of wisteria.
Next we continued to Lac Tchimpa....

2011-07-09T09:09:00.012-04:00

Congo: Conkouati Lagoon

I've been at Conkouati National Park for 2 weeks now and have boated around most of the southern end of the large lagoon. One of the first days we went out to where the lagoon drains into the Atlantic Ocean. The lagoon is formed from many rivers that meander down from mountains west of here and drain into lakes and then rivers north of the lagoon. Then the lagoon stretches through lowland forest and mangrove channels to the sea. Just before reaching the ocean it jogs north, leaving a thin sandy peninsula between lagoon and beach. In the photo below you can see a sliver of lagoon under the forest on the right side.
One of the first days I was here we took a boat to 5 different sandbars spread out around the southern part of the lagoon. People have reported seeing manatees on some of these sandbars in the past, so I wondered if I would find Halodule wrightii seagrass, which is the only species that grows in this part of Africa. I found Halodule near the mouths in several places in Gabon and it's known to be a favorite food of manatees. However, there was none here. Instead I found lots of tiny clam shells resting on the sand, and when I dug into the sandy mud I found hundreds of live ones just below the surface. As readers of this blog know, I'm trying to document that manatees eat clams and other shellfish in Africa... I hear reports about it most places I work, but it's hard to prove without samples from manatees (which can be a skin sample, nobody has to die!). In the meantime I'm collecting reference samples of plants and shellfish that manatees supposedly eat, so that I can prove it later, once I'm able to sample manatees.
I spent many days paddling around Conkouati Lagoon in a kayak looking for manatees, but despite great habitat and no hunting here, I saw none. There could be several reasons for this: they could be very scarce, they could be very shy, and/or they may only be active at night, which is the case in some places in Africa. It's an enormous lagoon and fishermen are everywhere, plus it was logistically difficult for me to go out at night.
Kayaking through mangrove tree tunnel.. there are lots of these here.
I did see lots of other nice wildlife, including both wild chimps an these semi-wild ones (that were rescued by 2 different organizations here and reintroduced to islands in the lagoon).
One day hile kayaking I saw something making a wake in the water in the distance. Hoping it was a manatee I paddled madly up to it, only to find it was this snake. It was very pretty, with aqua blue and black stripes.... I don't know what species it is (does anyone out there know?). It was about 2 feet long and had a brown belly.
While paddling and boating around I noticed I constantly heard banging noises from fishing boats. The fishermen use a technique here called "tapez tapez"... they use nets with a very fine mesh, and once the nets are set they bang on the sides of their boats and beat the water to scare all the fish into their nets. Several older fishermen are trying stop this practice because it catches even tiny juvenile fish, thereby depleting the lagoon. The younger men apparently don't care, they're looking for fast money. Aside from the important issue of over-fishing, the constant noise (we heard it around the clock, from all sides of the lagoon) scares off wildlife. I would imagine it certainly scares off mantees, who are generally very shy around boats as it is. So I wonder if this is why I didn't see any. The old fishermen are trying to get everyone to sign an agreement that they will all stop "tapez tapez", and my friend Hilde, who runs Conkouati National Park is very eager to get it stopped. But in a place where people are so poor, and in a lagoon so large, it's a huge challenge.
So the search continued.....

2011-07-04T05:41:00.021-04:00

Mayumba, Gabon to Conkouati, Congo

After finishing my surveys in southern Banio Lagoon, I returned to Mayumba for several days to interview fishermen and survey several rivers at the north end of the lagoon. I also worked with Jean Nestor and Chardene, the WCS outreach team, on manatee presentations for villages. Mayumba has a much higher human population so manatees are rarely seen (the last one anyone could remember was seen in the Louzibi River North in 2007). They may be around in small numbers, but they are very secretive. The Louzibi River North (there are 2 Louzibi Rivers draining into Banio Lagoon, which makes it complicated when discussing them with local people) has plenty of good manatee habitat, including an open swampy area with lots of plants they eat, but unfortunately there were no signs of them.

Some of the trees had funky twisted roots that wound at their bases like sculpture.

The second river we surveyed in the north, the Doumvou, quickly got very narrow. No manatees were seen there either, but they may have been hunted out a long time ago.

A few days later I took a local boat to the southern end of Banio Lagoon, a 4 hour trip. The boat was loaded with thousands of pounds of rice and beer, and 13 passengers. We stopped at every village on the lagoon to offload people and supplies, and finally arrived at the small town of Ndindi. Thanks to Jean Nestor in Mayumba who helped me make arrangements, a pickup truck was waiting to take me to a small hostel (which was an experience I won't soon forget- the entire roof was full of bats and the guano smell so strong that I was convinced the ceiling was going to collapse in on top of me, but there was literally nowhere else in the village to stay). The next morning I rented the same truck (not an inexpensive proposition, but there was no other way to get there, and I ended up taking 3 other paying passengers to help cut the cost) to go through the forest and across the border into the Congo. Before leaving I had to spend an hour at the local border patrol to await the commandante who was finishing his breakfast, then explain to him the purpose of my trip and have my passport info. registered (and pay a small bribe, of course). The "road" was basically a dry riverbed occasionally used by logging company trucks. We bounced over boulders and along sandy embankments from forest to savannah and at one point the driver told me we were entering the Congo. There was no sign to mark the boundary in this very remote area. A short while later we entered the village of Nzambi and went to the border patrol. I had been told they could be very difficult (especially to researchers with lots of equipment), but I was pleasantly surprised and they quickly waved me through without even asking a bribe. I think this definitely had to do with the fact that I told them I was working with Hilde, the director of Conkouati National Park, who is greatly respected in this area. After passing through the checkpoint we drove down a big hill to the edge of Conkouati Lagoon, which is surrounded by hilly savannah that peeks up above the gallery forest all along its edge. My friend Tim, a whale and dolphin researcher, picked me up in a small boat and brought me to the national park headquarters.

The logo of Conkouati national park is the manatee!

As we approached from the lagoon, I could see the park buildings on the savannah at the top of a hill. This is my first time here, and mine will be the first manatee surveys in many years.

Hilde & Tim's wonderful house sits at the top of the hill...

...with a beautiful view of the savannah and lagoon below. In the morning I hear chimps calling from the forest, and at sunset we saw buffalo grazing on a nearby hillside.

The savannah is dotted with termite mounds that resemble giant mushrooms.

This is Hilde and her 3 dogs when we went on my first kayak excursion on the lagoon.

This coastal lagoon has habitat ranging from mangroves and lots of Crinum natans near the ocean, to lowland forest up the rivers.

Crinum natans are gorgeous flowers and much more of a true water lily than the lotus that are regularly called water lilies.

On my second day I accompanied two park employees up a river to release 2 Dwarf crocodiles that had been confiscated from poachers. This gave me my first opportunity to see the riverine habitat. No hunting or fishing is allowed on the river and there were no camps. Elephant trails were everywhere and the habitat was great for manatees.

One of the Dwarf crocs, just prior to release.

Now that I have a better understanding of the layout of the lagoon, it's time to survey for manatees!!

2011-07-02T04:12:00.003-04:00

New Victor video!! Click here!!

2011-07-01T04:12:00.005-04:00

First day with Sea to Shore Alliance!

I'm very excited to announce that as of today I am be joining the staff at Sea to Shore Alliance, a non-profit wildlife research organization based in Florida. Sea to Shore's Director is Dr. James "Buddy" Powell, who has been my manatee mentor since 1998, and my African manatee work follows in the footsteps of Buddy's ten years of work in Africa in the 1980's and 1990's. Buddy also serves on my PhD committee at the University of Florida. I'm very happy to be joining an organization whose mission so closely compliments my work, and I look forward to working with their great team. All of my West African manatee projects will remain the same, and I'll be continuing my research studying the distribution, genetics, and feeding strategies of this elusive and little-understood species. Additionally, my efforts to build a collaborative regional network for African manatee researchers and to promote educational outreach throughout the range of the species will also continue full speed ahead!

Please note my new professional contact information:
Lucy Keith Diagne
Sea to Shore Alliance
4411 Bee Ridge Road, #490Sarasota, FL 34233

Check out the Sea To Shore website by clicking here

2011-06-30T11:00:00.019-04:00

Gabon: camping on the haute Banio

After spending time with Victor, it was then time to continue my surveys for wild manatees. As I mentioned in my previous post, I haven't been to this lagoon since 2006. At that time I only spent 2 days doing surveys because during my first season I traveled to many different parts of Gabon to get an overview of the country. So this time we did a much more in-depth survey of the entire south end of the lagoon, camping in a different place each night. I was accompanied by Papah, a biological technician at Mayumba National Park, and Chardene, who does educational outreach for the park. Papah worked with me when I was here in 2006 and I was impressed with how much he's learned about the lagoon since then. Both of them know everyone in the villages and speak Villi, the local language. Almost everyone also speaks French, but it puts peple at ease when they can speak the local language, and part of the trip was for Chardene to learn how to do the interviews (which she mastered by the second day).

Happy campers: Papah and Chardene as we quietly paddle a cove.
In the daytime we visited villages, interviewed people about manatees, and collected plant specimens as references for my stable isotope work (in order to know what manatees eat, I need reference samples of the plants they eat which isn't easy since no one knows all the species and there are literally thousands of different plants here). In the evenings after dinner we headed back out on the lagoon to look for manatees (we looked during the day too, but didn't see any and the population seems low here).

One evening we had a manatee right next to our boat and as it dove under us Papah could see it's entire body. We were all very excited, manatee sightings are rare here! We were enthusiastically talking about it when we all started to hear a loud humming sound as darkness fell. I thought it was a large boat engine in the distance. Then we all realized (to our horror) that it was the roar of millions and millions of mosquitoes coming from the center of the lagoon! As we boated back to camp the mosquitoes were literally as thick as a snow storm and you couldn't speak without getting a mouthful! It was unbelievable, but they were all in the center of the lagoon. Thankfully when we got back to camp, there were very few around.

Here are a few more photos from our lagoon tour:

Heading out into the peaceful lagoon early in the morning
Our second campsite had elephant tracks everywhere, but they didn't come while we were there. The lagoon is behind the trees.
Chardene preparing fried plantains for dinner...yum!!
A common site here: a field of submerged lilies in the shallow waters at the lagoon edge. Manatees swim through a 3D dinner.
A manatee-eye view of the Crinum natans (white flowers) and water lilies
This aquatic plant occurs in several lagoons in Gabon but I don't know what it is yet. There are very few references for aquatic plants in Africa so figuring out the plants is as much of a struggle as figuring out if manatees eat them!
My plant bucket overflowed...
There is also beautiful forest and powder soft white sand at the lagoon edge. Evening swims were wonderful!
Chardene explains the manatee poster to a fisherman in the village of Malimbe. Most people here have never seen a manatee so they were interested by the photos.
Fisherman in the village of Yoyo (no joke, that's the name!) during our meeting.
I got a big surprise at the village of Nkoko... there were Senegalese fishermen living there and they were so excited that I could speak alittle Wolof (thanks to my husband) that they invited me to a baptism and insisted I stay for the feast! You never know where the day will take you!
After the camping trip I returned to Rich's house to work with Victor for a few more days. When I arrived Brice excitedly told me that the day I left, an adult manatee had appeared in the floating grass just outside Victor's enclosure! It makes me wonder if wild manatees know he's there. I could hear Victor "talking" when I snorkeled in his enclosure (manatees make high pitched chirping sounds, to hear some Florida manatees click here), so maybe other manatees are talking back to him!

When I went back to Mayumba, I donated a manatee skull to the national park for use in their outreach programs (the manatee died of natural causes in N'dogo Lagoon in 2009 so I cleaned the skull for educational purposes)
...and I dried all my plant samples (thanks to Rich, Brice & Junior for helping me devise this home-made plant drying rack!) before packaging them to ship to Florida or analysis.

2011-06-29T12:05:00.017-04:00

Gabon: Return to Mayumba

I've wanted to post long before this, but I've had a series of computer nightmares recently and am only typing now thanks to the generosity of my friends Hilde & Tim, who've lent me a laptop. In early June, once I'd sorted out all my logistics and research permit applications in Libreville, my friend Rich Parnell and I flew to Tchibanga, the largest town in southern Gabon. After a night there we rode in a bush taxi (which in this case actually was a nice new 4x4 pickup truck that even had air conditioning!) to Mayumba, which is reached on a reasonably good dirt road that winds through hills and eventually ends in a short ferry crossing of Banio Lagoon. Mayumba sits on a peninsula at the north end of the long, thin lagoon, which stretches ~50 miles south, almost reaching the border of the Congo. This is the very first place I came in Africa to survey for manatees back in 2006. I've only been back once since then, for a meting in 2009, so I was anxious to spend more time here. This is also where Victor, the orphan West African manatee, is being raised. Infact, Victor lives in an enclosure at Rich's house and he has generously given not only his house (2 manatee staff need to live there fulltime to provide round the clock feeding) but his time, to help fundraise for Victor and supervise his care.

After an afternoon in Mayumba buying food and seeing some friends, we headed off in Rich's motorized canoe down the lagoon to his house, which is about a 45 minute ride normally, but laden with all my gear it took us almost 2 hours. As the sun set over the lagoon our colleagues Mike and Michelle buzzed us in a small plane as they finished surveying the coast for illegal fishing activity. The cool, fresh air of the dry season is fantastic and for once I needed a jacket in the evenings, rather than dripping sweat while sitting perfectly still.

Meeting Victor was an incredible experience for me. Not only are West African manatees normally very hard to see because they're so shy, but calves are almost never seen. Even when I worked with manatees in Florida, I rarely got to spend any time with calves, other than the sick and injured ones I rescued and drove to critical care facilities, or released back to the wild once they were older and healthy. So to be able to spend 2 weeks with Victor, to watch his normal behavior and learn from his caretakers, was a special treat for me.

A chubby Victor contemplates life after filling up on a bottle of milk

In his first 9 months, Victor struggled with skin wounds and to gain weight. But now he's healthy and rapidly getting fat. We owe alot of this to the efforts of Jonathan, the Masters student from Puerto Rico who spent 4 months here and trained the caretakers. Since I arrived in Gabon Victor's gained 6 kg! As of last week he weighs 38.5 kg and has started to nibble at roots in his new enclosure (which had to be built because the old one was too shallow as the water receded in the dry season). The new enclosure was a gigantic labor of love by Rich and the 3 manatee caretakers here, Brice, Davy and Junior, because they had to hack it out of dense brush at the edge of the lagoon. Everything we learn about Victor is new information about West African manatees and therefore very valuable in our understanding of the species.

Victor's new enclosure
We all dribble when we're sleepy! Victor still gets fed every 3 hours around the clock except between midnight and 6am.
Victor immediately checked out aquatic plants I "planted" in his enclosure. We are encouraging him to investigate plants that manatees eat in the wild here, and he's already eating some roots. In a few months he'll be transitioned off the bottle of milk and on to a regular diet of local plants.
The evidence: each morning we found newly exposed and partially chewed roots at the bottom of Victor's enclosure.
Junior and Brice display a manatee educational panel I had made (thank you Aimee Sanders for your amazing design expertise!) to be used for educational outreach programs here. Victor's enclosure and Banio Lagoon are in the background. Victor's story is a great opportunity to educate people in Gabon and other African countries about the importance of protecting manatees and we hope to raise more funds for this important work.
I collected hair and whisker samples from Victor as part of my stable isotope research. This analysis will help me understand when Victor began eating plants in addition to his milk. I am also collecting hair samples from wild manatees to determine food preferences over different seasons and locations. I also collected a genetics sample from Victor.
Victor's length and girth measurements are taken during each weekly checkup.
Victor is weighed by a 50 kg hanging scale and a net that he will soon outgrow. We hope to get him a new scale soon! A larger net should be easier to get, pieces are found washed up on the beach occasionally.
Victor gets his algae gently scrubbed off after his health assessment.
Next, I headed off down Banio Lagoon in search of wild manatees....

2011-06-29T05:09:00.001-04:00

Senegal: News article

I should've posted this link awhile ago but I was already in the field when the story came out, so I'm just getting to it now! Nice article focusing on West African manatee efforts in Senegal written by Amanda Fortier and featuring some of my photos... click here

2011-05-30T12:13:00.008-04:00

Thank you Jonathan!!

Jonathan Perez-Rivera left Gabon last night after spending the past 4 months working with orphan calf Victor and training his Gabonese caretakers. Victor is now steadily gaining weight and we're learning valuable new information about the growth of West African manatees through the data Jonathan carefully collected. We hope he can return to Gabon to continue working with Victor once he finishes his Masters degree in Puerto Rico. He has done a fantastic job and I'm very impressed with his efforts despite very remote and rustic field conditions.

Jonathan and I met up in Libreville this past weekend and spent both days discussing Victor's present and future, as well as other possible future work he might do for manatees in Africa. And of course we had time for a farewell beer at the Tropicana before he flew home on Sunday night! Cheers and safe travels Jonathan!

2011-05-24T09:42:00.002-04:00

News for the week of May 23, 2011

A new online article about my manatee work in Senegal was posted yesterday and they used some of my photos... click here to read it!

I arrived back in Libreville, Gabon late last night after a 42 hour journey from Florida. All 190 lbs of my gear made it with me and it's wonderful to be back in Africa! It's the height of the dry season here in Gabon which is a new experience for me. I'll be working in Libreville for the next 2 weeks... I'm applying for the necessary permit applications to do manatee research in Gabon and for the samples I plan to export back to Florida in July, and finalizing logistics for my fieldwork in Congo and southern Gabon. I'm thankful to be able to use the WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) office again to work from while I'm here. More news as soon as I get out to the field!

2011-05-17T12:28:00.005-04:00

Victor continues to grow!

Victor, the orphan manatee calf being rehabilitated in southern Gabon has now reached 30kg! This is a good milestone because it has taken a long time for him to steadily gain weight. When he was rescued he weighed 27 kg, but he lost weight for awhile before he adjusted to his diet of soy milk. For manatees (unlike people) fat is good! West African manatees are generally smaller than their cousins the Florida manatee, but no one has ever raised an African calf in captivity for this long before, so we don't know what normal growth is. Victor is providing his caregivers, consulting vets, and everyone else involved lots of new information.

To celebrate Victor's growth, caregiver Aimee made a Victor cake. Let's hope there are many more cakes to celebrate Victor's milestones as he grows and thrives!

Unfortunately funds for Victor's care are running very low, and he still needs captive care for at least 1 1/2 more years. If you can help, donations are gratefully accepted at:

Victor the Manatee, c/o the Marine Program
Wildlife Conservation Society
Attn: Grace Seo
2300 Southern Boulevard
Bronx, NY 10460 USA
Tel: 718-220-8156

In 2 days I'll be traveling back to Gabon to meet Victor and to do fieldwork in the lagoon where he lives. I'll be looking for other manatees there as well as the habitat to assess the plants that manatees eat. This summer I'll also do manatee surveys in the Congo, and I'll post all my news here on the blog, so check back soon!

2011-04-09T11:24:00.008-04:00

Senegal: Manatee hunter gives up killing in favor of conservation!

Very exciting news from Senegal.... a manatee hunter whose family has been working in the Casamance River for generations has decided to end all manatee hunting and work towards manatee conservation! Last week he gave his harpoon to Tomas Diagne, a manatee researcher in Senegal, as a symbol of his decision. Oceanium Dakar and Tomas have been working with the hunter's community of Pt. St. George in the Casamance for several years, because they have a spring where manatees come to drink freshwater each day.

I visited Pt. St. George in October 2010 and was amazed, because it's literally the only place I know in Africa where sighting manatees every day is guaranteed. The people of Pt. St. George are interested to develop manatee eco-tourism, and they already have an observation tower, so Tomas and I plan to provide them with permanent manatee educational panels and to help them begin manatee conservation measures. Our first task will be to install buoys around the spring to keep boats out so that manatees have a safer place to drink, which will also allow tourists more opportunities to see them from the viewing tower. Eco-tourism will hopefully provide an alternate livelihood to more members of the community, benefiting them for keeping manatees alive, rather than hunting them.

The viewing tower. Manatees come to the spring just in front of it.

2011-04-09T11:00:00.010-04:00

Recent network collaborator fieldwork

Here are some recent photos of colleagues in Angola and Nigeria using new field sampling equipment during their manatee surveys. I was able to send them this equipment thanks to several generous grants (much appreciated by both myself and the African researchers!). This equipment, which seems so basic to us in the USA but is so difficult to get in Africa, allows them to collect more accurate data in their home countries. These colleagues received depth sounders with built in digital thermometers, GPS units, binoculars, refractometers (which measure water salinity), headlamps for night surveys, secchi disks (to measure water clarity), rain ponchos, waterproof field notebooks, African aquatic plant guides (electronic versions on CD), and drybags to keep the equipment dry.

Miguel Xavier is doing manatee surveys of river systems in central Angola. Here he uses his new refractometer to check water salinity. His preliminary surveys found that there may be a high level of pollution in some rivers, so he has purchased a water chemistry set to test levels of several chemicals during his surveys.

Uzoma Edijmadu is a PhD student in Lagos, Nigeria studying manatees in Badegry Lagoon. He uses his new secchi disk to check water clarity, which is important to understand where aquatic plants (manatee salad!) are capable of growing.

The new depth sounders are great because they not only give the depth of the water (very important when searching for manatees in murky rivers and lagoons), but also the water temperature, all with the click of a single button! Bolaji Dunsin of the Nigerian Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research, who collaborates with Uzoma, checks their location on their new GPS while surveying Badegry Lagoon in western Nigeria.

I'm really happy to see the network collaborators in action and able to collect better data thanks to their new field equipment. I'll post photos of other collaborators as they are sent to me!

2011-03-18T10:59:00.005-04:00

The Manatee Scientists

The Manatee Scientists book highlighting some of my work in Africa (as well as Amazon and Florida manatee research) has just been released! I'm pretty excited after working with author Peter Lourie for the past 2 years. It's already listed on Amazon where you can see inside it (click on the title above). I'm biased of course, but I think it looks pretty good :-) It's written for young adults, so don't expect it to be too scientific, although I think Peter did a great job explaining fieldwork and it's great as an educational tool for budding young marine biologists. All the photos in the chapter on Africa are mine.

2011-02-17T16:41:00.006-05:00

Victor photos

New photos of the orphan manatee calf in Gabon, courtesy of Jonathan, the Masters student from Puerto Rico who is there working with him until April. Victor's skin lesions are healing well...

He is getting regular medical exams. Here Jonathan listens to his heart rate.
Victor sill needs to be bottle fed every few hours

Taking Victor's weight. They'll need a bigger scale as he grows!

2011-02-15T09:51:00.004-05:00

Update on Victor, the orphan manatee calf in Gabon

A manatee Masters student from Puerto Rico, Jonathan, has traveled to Gabon to work with the manatee for several months and it's going really well so far! After losing some weight the calf is now putting the pounds back on again.

Below is a message to Tony Mignucci in Puerto Rico (who arranged for Jonathan to go to Gabon)from Ricardo, of the Wildlife Conservation Society who oversees the daily operations of Mayumba National Park:

I’m just back from the field having spent the weekend down at the manatee site. I have been very impressed with Johnathan’s attitude, knowledge and professionalism and we have all been learning a lot from him, including Victor! ; ) He has already improved the quality of care provided to the manatee and has introduced the new feeding system that Victor has accepted very well, this will greatly improve the amount of nourishment we can provide Victor.

Thank you for making Jonathan available to us, it is a huge assistance to us and Victor.

Best wishes, Ricardo Zanre

Chef de Projet Mayumba

WCS Gabon

2011-01-25T08:26:00.002-05:00

Happy 2011!!

The silence on the blog is due to my travel back to the USA in the end of December. I recently moved my USA base to Gainesville, Florida where I'm working on my PhD focusing on West African manatees at the University of Florida. This semester I'm taking classes, giving several presentations and working to analyze more genetics samples in the lab, so it's more mundane work but I'll post anything interesting that comes up!

2010-12-17T05:07:00.003-05:00

Senegal Manatee Rescue Video

Click here: Navel Rescue video

This video is from the rescues we did in January 2009 at Navel in eastern Senegal but the video was only posted online a few months ago. Better late than never! There were many agencies involved, as listed in the description. I provided the satellite tags and tagging expertise to this project. These rescues continue on an annual basis (although on a much smaller scale with only 2 manatees needing rescue last year, as opposed to 7 in 2009). I hope to tag manatees in the Senegal River again in the future, because we still have so much to learn about how they survive in this Sahelian ecosystem.

2010-12-14T06:17:00.007-05:00

Mali wrap-up (for now)

Mali is a very important place to study the West African manatee because this population is isolated thousands of miles inland from their coastal relatives. As the photo above shows (courtesy of Google Earth), the inland Niger delta is a huge wetland that nourishes an otherwise extremely arid desert region. Manatees here were naturally isolated once they colonized this area however many years ago (possibly literally millions of years ago!), since the species does not migrate thousands of miles. As they slowly moved into this area over time, they stayed. But now the construction of dams in this region has permenently separated them from other populations downriver. As in other African countries with large dams (Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria) this makes protecting the species that much more urgent. There are also manatees in western Mali in the Senegal River (and possibly the 2 tributaries that form it, the Bafing and the Baoule) but these too are locked into the Senegal River by the Menantali dam in Mali, and the Diama dam at the mouth of the Senegal River.

So I'm very happy that there are people in multiple agencies in Mali who want to work to study and conserve manatees. At the workshop we had representatives from the Ministry of Water and Forestry, the Niger River Basin Authority, and the Niger River Department of Fisheries, and regional people came from many locations along the river: Kangaba at the border with Guinea; San in the southern portion; Sofara, Mopti, and Djenne in the inland delta. Malian interest in manatees is not new, as shown by this old poster I saw in several offices around the country (although the artist clearly used a photo of a Florida manatee, rather than a more slender African manatee, as his inspiration!)
But so far there have been only brief surveys here. Now I hope these folks can initiate longer term monitoring and research to really understand the size and needs of the population, the effects of dams, and illegal poaching (particularly where it's most prevalent at the north end of the delta). And as we discussed, hopefully they'll provide training for additional people, including colleagues in the northern part of the river at Timbuktu and Gao.

I appreciated the opportunity to work one on one with Berthe in San and Abdoulaye in Mopti (below), and look forward to hearing their future progress, which I'll report on this blog. It takes alot of self-motivation to keep going when you have limited resources, other work, etc. so I'll keep trying to support their efforts via the regional network.

I'm also extremely grateful to have a new partner in the Ministry of Water and Forestry! We are now working together to export the 9 tissue and bone samples I collected on this trip in order to start the first genetics analysis for the species from Mali. Below, Timbo and Tomas look over export regulations. These are more stingent than CITES because the species is fully protected in Mali. Since I left, Berthe has already collected another sample. So we're off and running!

2010-12-14T06:04:00.002-05:00

New project webpage

The Save Our Seas Foundation, one of my funders, has created a new website for my African manatee work... check it out at http://saveourseas.com/projects/manatees_ga. Right now it's in somewhat of a first draft form because we're waiting to add photos of West African manatees (coming soon I hope!), there will be a link to this blog, and hopefully other info in the future.

I really appreciate the opportunity to continue raising awareness about the "unknown" manatees. I am determined to change that!

2010-12-06T14:49:00.015-05:00

African Manatee Training Workshop in Djenne, Mali

(Sorry, I would've liked to have posted this earlier, but we are having constant power outages in Dakar!)

During the last week of November, I led a manatee research and conservation training workshop with 11 participants from 4 countries (Mali, Niger, Chad, and Ivory Coast) in Djenne, Mali. This is the first time I've run a workshop on my own, and some of it was modelled after the workshops I co-led in Ghana for the past 2 years. I'd like to give huge thanks to my husband Tomas, who greatly helped with many aspects of logistics and translation for this workshop, and offered participants his insight from his own manatee work in Senegal. Aside from lectures, we had a group discussion about fundraising for research in Africa, and most importantly, trips to the field for practical training on field sampling equipment use, village interview techniques and manatee survey techniques. Our workshop was held at the Hotel Dar Salaam in Djenne, a new hotel just a bit out of town. The staff there was great, the food delicious and the setting perfect for talkiing about manatees, since they had a carcass in Djenne last year. This is the front of the hotel, with local sheep passing by! We had 1-2 lectures each day on topics including manatee biology and evolution, research techniques, sample collection, and field equipment.
The first day we went over environmental sampling equipment such as GPS units, depth sounders, salinity meters, and other basic tools the participants will need to record the manatee's habitat in their home countries.
This was our boat (or "pinasse" in the local French) for field outings. It was nice to have a cover from the hot sun.
On our first field trip participants learned how to use field sampling equipment. In this photo Berthe from San, Mali uses the GPS.
We had two different types of depth sounders, this one (being tested by Boureima from Niger) also records water and air temperature as well as detecting animals moving below the water's surface.

Timbo from the Dept. of Water and Forestry in Mali checks the reading on the other type of depth sounder.
I sponsored three participants from outside Mali, including Wachoum from Chad (looking through binocs), Kouame from Ivory Coast (middle) and Boureima from Niger.
On our first and second outings we also went to local villages so participants could practice manatee interview techniques. The Bozo people are the fishermen in this area and they have alot of local knowledge about manatees.
In the interview at the village of Syndaga, Diakite of the Water and Forestry Ministry from Djenne (on left) led the questions with village elders. They see manatees in this area year round and explained mating herds by a story calling it a "manatee wedding" where the manatees gather to celebrate a bride and groom.
At the end of the interview some of the villagers wanted to have a photo with our group. People here recognized the local workshop participants that were from Djenne, which greatly helped us gain their trust for the interview.
Participants also gave lectures about manatee research in their country. Here Boureima discusses his research in W National Park in Niger (so named because the Niger River forms a "W" in this area).
I also led the group in a discussion of manatee necropsy techniques. We didn't have an actual manatee carcass for demonstration, so for measurements we used an inflatable orca (I was unable to locate an inflatable manatee so this was as close as I could get. If anyone knows where I can get a manatee for future training use, please let me know!)
Practicing girth measurements...
During breaks and free time participants had lots of opportunities to talk about their work and what they hope to achieve in their countries.

Kouame from Ivory Coast had an example of a t-shirt his program has distributed there, urging people not to kill manatees.
I'd like to thank my colleagues in Mali who assisted in setting up the workshop: Semega and Guindo from Niger River Basin Authority, and Timbo from the Ministry of Water and Forestry.
This is most of the group on the last day, after I handed out donations of field equipment (one set for each country, hopefully I can fund more in the future) to help their manatee data collection. The money for this equipment was made possible by generous grants from several funders.

Thanks to all the participants for all your interest in manatee conservation! I look forward to hearing how your work progresses!

2010-12-02T08:09:00.001-05:00

Mali: Sevare and Mopti

In mid-November we spent the Tabaski holiday in Sevare with our colleague Semega's sister and her family. After that we met up with Abdoulaye Guindo at his office. He's the Niger River Basin Authority manager here. Abdoulaye attended the training workshop I co-led in Ghana last year and it was good to see him again! He's hoping to start manatee research in this region.

Nearby, Mopti is a city that was originally built on 3 small islands at the junction where the Bani River joins the Niger. The whole city is surrounded by water and small Bozo fishing villages that seem to float on the surface. There's also a huge area of rice fields. We started out at the port and looked for fishermen to ask about manatees.

This is one of the Bozo villages just across from Mopti

Old town Mopti

Lots of good manatee habitat everywhere, but also lots of people
All around Mopti is still flooded from the rainy season
While driving to one fishing village we stopped at the edge of the river to see the confluence of the Bani and Niger Rivers. We ended up talking to this fisherman (on the right) who told us people see manatees traveling by and feeding on grass along shore in this area, particularly at night. He knew of a village further upriver where manatees are supposedly quite tame and approach people in the river. I wished we had time to go there, but at least Abdoulaye got the name so he can go check it out later. The guy also told us the Bozo people have a legend that when the water dries up, the manatee turns into a turtle!

Later we met with elders from 2 other Bozo villages. They told me manatees are not hunted here because people know they'll get in trouble if they're caught, but further north (closer to Timbuktu) people still regularly hunt them. People here are fascinated by them.

These are some of the manatee samples I collected in Mopti... a vertebra and two pieces of dried tissue. Hopefully I'll be able to isolate DNA from these to learn about the population here and to determine if it is genetically isolated from coastal African manatee populations.

In Mopti's port I saw this boat with a flag that said "From here 2 Timbuktu" and wished I could hop aboard! Timbuktu is about a four day boat ride up the inland Niger delta. I think it would be an interesting trip sometime, but on this day I needed to get ready for the training workshop I was leading the following week.

2010-12-01T17:32:00.004-05:00

Conservationists Working to Protect Endangered African Manatees:

Click here to view this article on manatees in Senegal!

2010-11-18T13:09:00.016-05:00

Mali: Bamako to Sevare

On Tuesday morning we drove out of a smoke-filled Bamako as everyone began preparing to cook their sheep for the Tabaski holiday the following day. Once we left the city the air cleared and we drove through an area of very cool rock formations, then into a zone of lush forest, then finally into a Sahelian scrub landscape that became drier the further north we went. After several hours we crossed the Bani River, one of the largest tributaries of the Niger River. The Bani is created from two other rivers, the Baoule and the Bagoe, which flow from the mountains of Ivory Coast to the south. It still feels odd to me that rivers flow to the north here.
After lunch in Segou we stopped at the town of San, where we had arranged to meet Mr. Berthie who works for the Niger River Basin Authority in that area. We met him at his house and were also joined by another man who is the son of the local "water chief". After drinking the customary cup of tea, we set off in a four wheel drive through miles of flooded rice fields, driving on the top of narrow dikes and dodging donkey carts piled high with hay.
After about 10km we reached a village called Sokon at the edge of the Bani River. The village is in a fairly remote area and it was important to us because the people here report that they regularly see manatees. When we arrived we first met with the chief to say hello and explain our interest in manatees. He was an older man who assigned a younger man from the village to give us a tour near the river's edge. As we walked to the river we passed this traditional mosque which I thought was neat. The rainy season ended about a month ago so the waters that flooded a huge plain are now receding back to the river. We learned that just as the Senegal River floods a huge area and the manatees swim onto the floodplain to feed on the grasses and trees, the same thing happens here. People see large groups, mating herds and babies. They estimated the largest group was about 20 manatees. During the dry season the locals told us they know of three deep holes in the river where the manatees stay. They can only be reached by boat and we didn't have time to go that day, but hopefully Mr. Berthie will follow up with this. There are no manatee hunters in the village but they did have some manatee bones which they consider sacred; the cheif told us manatee bones have magic.

This area where the water runs back to the river looks just like Navel in eastern Senegal, even the tree species are the same.

At the height of the rainy season, the water level reaches the leaves of the trees, at least a 2 meter rise.
We also found some freshwater mollusk shells but no one knew if the manatees eat them as they do in other places. Another mystery to solve!

Mr. Berthie is on the left and he'll take part in the training workshop next week. I was very impressed with his knowledge of manatees in Africa and I think he'll be a huge asset in this region. The local guide froim the village (on my left) was also knowledgible and enthisiastic. The water chief's son is in the maroon shirt, second from left. He later gave me a manatee earbone and another piece of bone for genetics.

Before we left Sokon we returned to the chief's house to thank him and tell him we hope to learn more about manatees here in the future. Then he gave me a chicken as a gift! Never had that happen before! Not to accept it would've been rude, but I can't exactly travel with a chicken, so I gave it to Mr. Berthie for his family.

Later that night, after 14 hours on the road, we reached Sevare.

2010-11-15T13:00:00.000-05:00

Mali: Bamako

It's been a busy and interesting few days in Bamako. After arriving last Thursday, Tomas and I met up with one of our Malian colleagues, Alfousseini, who took us on a grand tour of the city. The city is defined by the Niger River which passes through on it's long journey from the mountains of Guinea, north through Mali, Niger and Nigeria on it's way to the sea. There are no manatees in the river in Bamako anymore, due to dams and probably hunting long ago. Next week we'll travel north to Mopti and Djenne to study where manatees are found today- the inland Niger delta.

Central Bamako near city hall. The streets are crowded with literally thousands of motor bikes.

Bamako sits in a valley below lots of hills and the mighty Niger River flows through the middle. It is picturesque but unfortunately polluted from factories and agricultural runoff.
This is the office of the Niger River Basin Authority, where Alfousseini works. They are very interested in manatee conservation and research.
We also went to the zoo, where they used to have 2 captive manatees which unfortunately died awhile back (causes of death are unclear, but my sense is that unfortunately they didn't know how to properly care for them). This is the sign near the pool where they kept them. We were told that people flocked to the zoo to see them, because they are so fascinated by such a mysterious creature and opportunities to see one are so rare.

The manatee pool.

After the manatees died they preserved them in a giant tank of formalin so that people could still see them. Unfortunately someone broke the glass and stole the manatee bones and other parts, which they consider useful for traditional medicine. Alfousseini and the zoo keeper lamented that people could be so short-sighted. All that remains today is a chunk of mummified skin.
We also saw the National Museum of Art, the presidential palace and gardens, the conservatory of music and many busy markets! It's just a few days before the Muslim holiday Tabaski, so the markets are crazy with shoppers buying food, new clothes and other supplies. We went to the market to check out the "fetish" stands, which are the vendors selling animal parts, usually for traditional medicine or religious purposes. Although I find looking at piles of dead animals (and particularly wildlife) depressing, I've found I learn alot from these stands in the sense that you can tell how prevalent certain species are in a country by their presence or absence in the market, and you can also tell how stringently (or not) the laws are enforced by the willingness of vendors to talk about or show you that they have certain species. Here in Bamako manatee bones and parts were not seen, and most vendors either didn't know what a manatee was or didn't have any. Sometimes they are reluctant to talk to a white person, so Tomas went back without me and was able to see a couple manatee bones. But overall this market had much less wildlife than others I've seen.

This is a typical vendor stand. In general vendors here had primarily domestic animal parts (horse skulls, dog legs), but I did see a few monkey skulls, crocodile and antelope pelts.

On Monday we met with officials from several different government agencies to talk about the upcoming training workshop and manatees in Mali. These diplomatic meetings are always necessary in Africa in order to get people from multiple agencies to work together. Alfousseini was extremely helpful in setting up meetings with all the correct people, and I'm also thankful for Tomas, who always knows the most diplomatic thing to say and has taught me so much about protocols with officials! The first meeting of the day was with the director of the Niger River Basin Authority. He was a very pleasant fellow who talked at length about the need for conservationists and people involved in development to work together to protect wildlife.

Next I met with the director of Water and Forestry (middle of photo below, Alfousseini is on the right) which is an agency similar to Fish and Wildlife in the USA.

Then we met with the head of the wildlife protection section. He plans to attend the training workshop in Djenne so we mostly talked logistics.

After that we stopped by the Ministry of Environment to say hello to several officials. Phew! Now it's time to pack because we leave for Mopti early tomorrow morning.

2010-11-10T07:09:00.004-05:00

Enroute to Maliimage courtesy of whatgives365.files.wordpress.com

Tomorrow morning I'll travel from Senegal to Bamako, Mali to work with manatee colleagues Alfousseini Semega and Abdoulaye Guindo, and see their manatee study sites in the inland Niger River delta. Later in the trip I'll also lead a week long manatee research and conservation training workshop for African colleagues, very similar to the ones I taught in Ghana for the past 2 years. This time many of the trainees will be from Mali, but we'll also have participants from Niger, Ivory Coast and Chad. So it should be a very interesting trip! I'll post more soon....

2010-11-01T10:11:00.000-04:00

Senegal: On the trail of a dead manatee

Last June an adult female manatee died in a narrow lagoon called Mbodiene. I try to follow up on all of these reports since any information we can gather adds to our sparse knowledge of the species. This manatee was particularly interesting because it had been seen alive with 2-3 others several days before it died, and photos and reports clearly indicated it was in distress. Unfortunately I was in the USA at the time and could not get to the site myself. Due to the somewhat slow chain of communication, after the manatee died no one could get to the site fast enough to collect samples before the local population butchered the carcass for meat. There were enough witnesses to verify that the manatee did die naturally, it was not killed. Several people tried to help it as it struggled to breathe. But unfortunately once it died, people couldn't imagine seeing the meat "go to waste".

In this photo the manatee propels itself high out of the water as a concerned man tries to help it. Based on this photo and others showing it bobbing on the water's surface, it is possible the manatee had a watercraft impact injury (I used to see lots of these in Florida and they are less obvious than manatees cut by boat propellers. Often the manatee has trouble diving because a broken rib bone has punctured a lung). Photo courtesy of Oceanium Dakar.

My guess is there was little anyone could've done to save it. There are no facilities in Africa to take care of injured or sick manatees (or any other marine mammals for that matter!).

People on scene claimed the other manatees with the distressed one were it's "babies" because they were smaller, but based on descriptions I got, I think these were just other individuals accompanying it. Female manatees are larger than males, and it's a common mistake for people to think males are babies, or that manatees travel in "family groups" (also not true, they form temporary social groups for feeding, socializing or mating, but these are not related individuals). Ultimately the other manatees headed out of the lagoon back to the Atlantic Ocean. Here in Senegal manatees are commonly reported near shore in the ocean moving between different lagoons/estuaries.

So last week I went to Joal to meet with Karim Sall, a biologist who is involved with mangroves, sea turtles, and marine mammals in the Delta Saloum region. Aside from wanting to meet him because he has lived in the area for many years and is a great source of local information, I was specifically hoping to learn more about a manatee that died in Mbodiene Lagoon. Karim told me at first he thought the manatees had become accidentally trapped in the narrow lagoon, but after talking to some old men there he discovered there are at least 2 freshwater springs within it and that manatees are sighted annually, mostly between March and May. This is interesting because that's the end of the dry season, so manatees may be migrating along the coast and using the springs as a stopover for freshwater. The lagoon is only 9km long and about 200 feet wide, so manatees are easy to spot when they're there.

Karim (right) searches his computer for pictures he took of the manatee remains.

This is the photo he gave me. By the time Karim got to the site last June, the manatee had been completely butchered and only pieces of skin were left. I will use a piece of the dried tissue for genetics. Photo courtesy of K. Sall. After talking to Karim, I went out to the lagoon. I went to the site where the manatee died to collect a GPS point and see the area for myself. There were mangroves along the edge but no visible seagrasses or other aquatic plants. Although I checked at several houses, no one who had seen the manatee was around, but the site visit helps me learn about manatee use areas for the future. I'd like to find the springs and document those as well... there's a huge network of freshwater springs that manatees use in this region.

Mbodiene Lagoon is very narrow and shallow, especially at low tide.

On the way home we saw this sign for Pointe Sarene with a manatee caricature on it. Pt. Sarene also has a freshwater spring It may seem like these little bits and pieces of information, gathered so long after the manatee died, are not much. But when we know so little, every bit helps to piece together the African manatee's life history.

2010-10-31T23:29:00.004-04:00

Building new partnerships

This past week I traveled south to Saly and met with Dawda Saine, a manatee researcher from the Gambia who I have been talking to on email for awhile. Dawda is very enthusiastic to get manatee field research started in his country, so we took the opportunity of his attendance at a fisheries workshop here in Senegal to meet and talk about manatees in his country and future fieldwork. Dawda is also trying to raise funds to travel to Florida for necropsy training at the state's Marine Mammal Pathobiology lab.

While talking to Dawda we were joined by Alhaji Sesay of Sierra Leone, who is also interested in manatee work. He knows several other colleagues I have been in touch with there. He proudly showed me a manatee sticker on his briefcase from a previous manatee workshop he attended. We all discussed the benefits of a regional network for researchers working directly in the field, the need for assessment of manatee populations, and the need for training for researchers so that they can get the most accurate data. I am always happy to connect with such motivated people working in Africa!

Dawda Saine, Alhaji Sesay and I talk manatees

2010-10-22T06:45:00.002-04:00

French Version of the Manatee Necropsy Manual / version française du manuel de nécropsie des lamantins‏

For manatee researchers:
We are happy to announce the completion of a French version of the Manatee Necopsy Manual originally written by Bonde, O'Shea, and Beck in 1983. In this French version we updated datasheets to French versions that are currently in use in Francophone Africa, as well as some of the descriptions for data collection techniques. Parts of this translation follows the 2006 Spanish translation (in other words, dated text relating only to manatee carcass recovery and necropsy within Florida was removed). We hope the French translation will serve those working in many parts of the world to better collect manatee carcass data! A copy is available at coralie.nourisson@gmail.com or by contacting Lucy Keith.

Cheers, Lucy Keith & Coralie Nourisson

Pour des chercheurs de lamantin:
C'est avec plaisir que nous vous annonçons l'accomplissement d'une version française du manuel de nécropsie des lamantins à l'origine écrit par Bonde, O'Shea, et Beck en 1983. Dans cette version française nous avons mis à jour les formulaires techniques en utilisant les versions françaises actuellement utilisées en Afrique francophone, ainsi que certaines descriptions des techniques de collecte de données. Une partie de cette traduction suit la traduction de 2006 en espagnol (le texte se rapportant uniquement à la récupération et à la nécropsie des carcasses de lamantin en Floride a été supprimé). Nous espérons que la traduction française servira ceux travaillant dans de nombreuses régions du monde pour mieux rassembler les données des carcasses de lamantin ! Une copie est disponible sur demande à coralie.nourisson@gmail.com ou en contactant Lucy Keith.

Merci, Lucy Keith & Coralie Nourisson

Coralie Nourisson
ECOSUR - Proyecto manati
Av Centenario Km 5.5
Chetumal Q.Roo 77900. Mexico
coralie.nourisson@gmail.com
www.geomare.org

2010-10-18T17:25:00.005-04:00

Back to Africa!

I landed in Dakar, Senegal late Saturday night and am now finalizing my work for this field season, which will be shorter than the past few years (only 2 months!) because I need to be back at the University of Florida to take classes in January. For those of you who may not know, in addition to my job working with West African manatees, I am also working on my PhD on West African manatees (ecology, behavior and genetics). So I pretty much do nothing but think about manatees at this point! But I love it.

Dakar is very hot and humid right now, close to 90 degrees, which is challenging to acclimate to after spending the last 6 weeks in the wonderful, cool, northeastern USA. The rainy season should be ending soon, which will also hopefully bring a drop in temperature. I hope to do more surveys and a training session for biologists here. I will also be going to Mali in a few weeks to lead a manatee training workshop there with participants from 5 countries.

2010-10-13T11:27:00.003-04:00

Gabon: Manatee calf video

This wonderful video of the manatee calf in Gabon was made by Aimee Sanders about a week ago.

Unfortunately since then the manatee's wounds have worsened, so I hope the anti-biotics and diligent veterinary care he is receiving will help! He really needs your support if you are able to help!

Ouch!!!

2010-10-13T11:25:00.001-04:00

Manatee calf in Gabon: surviving but needs your help!

It's wonderful news that the calf (now renamed "Victor") has survived over 2 weeks! Manatee veterinarians and colleagues from around the world who have experience in caring for orphaned manatee calves in developing countries have provided excellent advice via the internet, and have sent the first feeding supplies to help the staff there keep the animal alive. None of the people on site have worked with manatees previously, and all are to be commended for huge efforts over the past weeks, feeding the manatee every 3 hours around the clock, finding and housing volunteers, and locating supplies. Ken Cameron, a WCS veterinarian who has manatee expertise has arrived on scene, given the manatee a health assessment and is addressing some health issues.

But now that it appears likely Victor will survive, funds are desperately needed to support the care of this animal for the longer term. Needs include:

Formula (soy milk and vitamins) = $250 per month

Veterinary supplies = $200 per month

National transport costs (for supplies, staff rotation, etc.) = $200 per month

Communication costs (internet, phone) = $100 per month

Hiring and provisions for 2 local staff or expat volunteers to help with care and feeding = $900 per month

Other costs (maintenance of the corral, record keeping, etc) = $100 per month

Propane refrigerator and stove for storing supplies and preparing formula= $500

Setting up basic accomodation for round the clock workers (cots, mosquito nests, building repair, etc.)= $500

Emergency international vet transport to site = $1000

Possible translocation = $1500

This appeal for support is urgent since no dedicated funds currently exist for this manatee calf, and care will get very expensive over time. Orphan manatee calves need two years of care before being released back to the wild. West African manatees are very rare and hunted extensively throughout their range. This is an exceptional opportunity not only to help this individual, but for scientists to learn about this elusive species, and to promote educational awareness for manatees in Gabon and throughout Africa. If you are able to help, please send donations to:

Victor the Manatee c/o the Marine Program
Wildlife Conservation Society
Attn: Grace Seo
2300 Southern Boulevard
Bronx, NY 10460 USA
Tel: 718-220-8156

Please make checks out to the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Thank you!

2010-09-27T12:26:00.008-04:00

Live baby manatee rescued in southern Gabon

On Friday afternoon a baby manatee (which is referred to as a calf) washed up on the beach at Mayumba, Gabon. This was a very significant event for two reasons: this is the first record of a manatee in the ocean off Gabon (they have been documented in the sea in countries further north, but never Gabon where they are normally found in lagoons and rivers), and also manatees are normally pretty rare in this region. The calf was alone, beaten up (most likely from being tossed in the surf), and covered in barnacles, which tells us it had been in the ocean for at least a couple weeks. The baby is a little male, 117 cm long and weighs 27 kg. It is unknown if his mother lost him or if he might've been swept out to sea from one of the lagoon mouths in the area.

The good news is that the staff of Mayumba National Park rescued him and contacted me (unfortunately I'm not there!), and I was able to put them in touch with manatee veterinarians and biologists from other parts of the world who have extensive experience rescuing orphan manatees, particularly in developing countries (these folks are from Puerto Rico, USA and Belize). Mayumba is extremely remote so getting basic supplies there such as the correct baby formula (which needs to be soy based) and calf nipples for a bottle is very difficult. Supplies are being searched for in the capital of Libreville, a 2 day drive away or short flight, assuming the runway is open.

After a night in a bath tub to make sure he was stabilized, the little manatee (being nicknamed "Serendipity") was moved to a corral in the Banio Lagoon. This is a great location, with fresh water for him to drink and several species of plants that manatees normally eat. Folks there built a corral that gives him plenty of space to move around but is shallow enough for his care givers to work with him.

He is not taking much from the bottle yet and survival rates of orphaned manatees are normally pretty low, but I'm incredibly impressed with the effort of everyone there and the other knowledgible folks offering great advice and encouragement via email. My colleague, veterinarian Ken Cameron, is currently working to travel to Mayumba from the Congo in order to give the manatee a health assessment. My fingers are crossed for the little guy!!

**All photos courtesy of Aimee Sanders & Ricardo Zanre!

2010-08-10T14:02:00.002-04:00

Blobfish?

This is quoted from an article in the New York Times published today:

Reporting recently in the journal Conservation Biology, Morgan J. Trimble, a research fellow at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, and her colleagues examined the scientific literature for roughly 2,000 animal species in southern Africa, and uncovered evidence that scientists, like the rest of us, may be biased toward the beefcakes and beauty queens. Assessing the publication database for the years 1994 through 2008, the researchers found 1,855 papers about chimpanzees, 1,241 on leopards and 562 about lions — but only 14 for that mammalian equivalent of the blobfish, the African manatee.

“The manatee was the least studied large mammal,” Ms. Trimble said. Speculating on a possible reason for the disparity, she said, “Most scientists are in it for the love of what they do, and a lot of them are interested in big, furry cute things.”

To see the entire article click here. Luckily I love what I do and still think manatees are extremely cool and interesting animals, even if they don't win beauty contests!

2010-07-27T11:55:00.002-04:00

West African Manatee, Species of the Day

As part of the Year of Biodiversity, the IUCN Red List has been celebrating by posting a Species of the Day to bring attention to plants and animals around the world. On July 27 it was the West African Manatee's turn! You can see the pdf by clicking here. To see other species, please scroll down to the link on the right side of this blog, which updates each new species daily through the end of 2010.

2010-07-24T09:00:00.008-04:00

Lectures at the Columbus Zoo

West African manatees in Ohio? Well no, but the Columbus Zoo does have one of the few Florida manatee exhibits outside of Florida, and also has supported my manatee research in Africa for the past 4 years. They invited me up to Ohio to give a couple talks about my work, so this past week I spoke to their Conservation Committee, as well as a group of zookeepers and docents. It was really fun to be able to share my work with them face to face.

I also got a tour of most of the zoo, including the manatee exhibit of course! This is the entrance of Manatee Coast. I loved the way it makes you feel as if you're on the edge of a mangrove forest. The building has a retractable roof, so it's open air in summer. And the tank glass allows you to see both above and below the water... an eye to eye view of the manatees. There may be a need for a manatee rehabilitation center in Africa someday, so the Columbus exhibit gave me lots of inspiration.
This is a view across the manatee tank. The public is on the right and those are real mangrove trees on the left!
In this view a manatee named Stubby (because she's unfortunately missing most of her tail fluke) is watching the visitors. Columbus currently has 6 manatees... all were rescued due to injuries. There are 4 juveniles who were rescued in Florida with cold stress symptoms (similar to frost bite in humans) during the unusually cold winter last year. They will go back to Florida to be released back to the wild once they're fully recovered.

In the wild, manatees eat aquatic plants such as seagrass on the bottom of bays and rivers as well as plants that grow along the edge of waterways. So captive manatees are fed both at the surface and from bottom feeder units to simulate their natural environment. The manatee exhibit includes a display that discusses manatee telemetry (tracking) research and shows a real tag and belt. I hope to create similar displays in several African museums.

I'd like to extend my huge thanks to Becky Rose, Field Conservation Coordinator (on right) and Carrie Pratt, head curator of Columbus Zoo's manatee exhibit (on left), who organized a fantastic visit for me. Thanks so much to everyone at the zoo for all your enthusiasm and hospitality!

2010-07-18T16:40:00.013-04:00

Informational Panels

Thanks to funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and terrific design work by Aimee Sanders of Green Butterfly Designs, we have created three different 60cm x 90cm manatee educational panels in French for natural history museums in West African countries. The first ones were created in Gabon, but they are not specific to any country and therefore can be used in any Francophone country that has manatees.

The first panel gives general information about all the sirenians (manatees and their cousins the dugongs) around the world:
The second one discusses information specific to West African manatees, such as the types of habitat they live in, their physical characteristics, laws that protect them, and threats.
The third panel focuses on West African manatee research (behavioral, physiology and habitat studies, genetics, etc.), protection measures and ways that the public can contribute to their conservation.
One set of panels will be installed at the ecomusee in Sette Cama, Gabon, which also displays a manatee skeleton. Sette Cama attracts several thousand tourists a year who come for wildlife viewing and sport fishing.
The ecomusee sits on a narrow peninsula between N'dogo Lagoon and the Atlantic Ocean.

A second set of panels created in Gabon will hopefully soon be installed in an ecomousee in a different part of the country. I hope to produce more of these for other African countries soon!

2010-07-12T20:04:00.006-04:00

Field Equipment Donation

Tomas and I would like to thank Save the Manatee Club for an amazing donation of a trolling motor, GPS and 4 life jackets to be used for manatee surveys at newly created Tocc Tocc Reserve in northern Senegal, the first reserve created specifically for the West African Manatee. Tomas has worked very hard over the past few years with the local community and the government of Senegal to get the reserve created. The area is a small lagoon on the western side of Lac de Guiers, a huge lake that provides drinking water for the capital city of Dakar and for local agriculture. Tomas saw his first West African manatees there several years ago, and realized that this quiet section of the lake where manatees are now often observed would be a great place to establish a sanctuary, and hopefully someday an education center. The reserve is also important habitat for the relatively rare Adanson's Mud Turtle (Pelusios adansoni) and many species of waterbirds and fish.

Last summer a university student worked at the reserve conducting manatee surveys (he had 7 sightings) and interviewing members of the local community about manatees. This equipment is vital for further surveys and will provide greater safety and data accuracy. We hope to establish a database of year round sightings, organize a clean up of derelict fishing nets and hopefully tag manatees here to learn more about their habitat use patterns in the lake and the adjacent Senegal River. We are incredibly honored that Save the Manatee Club supports this work!

A view of Tocc Tocc Reserve, water lily paradise. So far I've documented 10 species of known manatee food plants there.

2010-07-12T19:20:00.001-04:00

In the Genetics Lab

While I've been silent on my blog I've been busy working in a genetics laboratory in Gainesville, Florida. It's been really exciting to get going on the analysis of the samples I've collected in Africa over the past 4 years! Although I'm more of an outdoor person, and working with delicate glassware and pipetting minuscule quantities into test tubes is not my forte, I'm really enjoying it and learning alot. It will be very interesting to see what can be learned about West African manatees in different countries and regions across their huge range. Hopefully we'll be able to tell how closely populations are related (or not), which then can be used by biologists and managers to address conservation issues.

This is the first time I've done any genetics since the 1980's, so I spent the first week getting up to speed and learning the different techniques I need to analyze manatee tissue and bone samples. I'm very lucky to be working with two manatee genetics experts from the U.S. Geological Survey, Maggie and Bob. Two other women who work in the lab, Gaia and Teresa, have been wonderful, patient teachers as well!

Happy faces in the lab: Teresa, Maggie and Gaia

The lab equipment seemed daunting at first (mostly because it is all very expensive and delicate!) but my comfort level has greatly improved in the last few weeks.
So to start, we take a small piece of manatee tissue that has been collected and preserved in the field. Using a very sterile procedure (because other DNA, including our own, can easily contaminate the sample) a piece about the size of a pea is cut and put in a vial with a chemical that breaks down the proteins and dissolves the tissue into individual cells.
The sample is gently rocked in a warm bath overnight to allow the chemical to break up the tissue... the warm bath part sounded good to me!
And then we add a series of chemicals to isolate the DNA. All of this involves using a pipette to mix extremely tiny amounts (measured in micro liters) into vials, centrifuge (spin) it and then remove a tiny layer of liquid off the top of the vial using a pipette. It definitely takes practice and a steady hand! Some of the chemicals we use are not friendly, so we have to work with our arms inside a fume hood (which has a fan to keep toxic chemicals from bothering us or getting into the lab). It's a bit awkward until you get used to it.
Once that's done, we add primers (specific, short DNA segments) to the DNA and it is amplified millions of times in a heating and cooling process (in a special machine) known as PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction). The entire process takes about 12 hours from start to finish, there's lots of room for errors and at the end we hope there's some DNA in our vials! Definitely not as easy as it looks on CSI. To test the sample to see if we got DNA, we use an instrument called a nanophotometer (photo below), which shoots a beam of light through a tiny droplet of the sample and gives a general indication of whether or not DNA is present, although I've learned that other contaminants such as proteins can give a false reading. For all the samples that get good readings, we then do a purification procedure (more pipetting and vials!) to maximize the DNA.
Along the way we transfer the sample into many different vials, all of which need to be labelled with the correct ID number. It's alot like cooking, you follow the recipe but because of the quality of the ingredients, things don't always turn out the same way. Much of the manatee tissue I have is from carcasses that were badly decomposed or hunters who cooked manatee meat, all of which degrades the DNA. So I've had a few samples fail, but most are yielding something, and Maggie is helping me tweak the techniques to have the best possibility of getting DNA out of difficult samples.

After each procedure we run an electrophoresis gel which indicates if DNA is present (the orange bands). We mix gelatin up and pour it into a mold, the samples are inserted into tiny wells in the gel, an electric current passes through it and we can see the DNA bands in reference to a ladder (large group of orange bands at the top of the photo). The brightness of the orange band is an indicator of the quantity of DNA in the sample, so a fainter band has less DNA than a brighter one. We then photograph each gel to keep a record the results. Samples that have DNA are sequenced at the University of Florida to tell us what the DNA strand contains. They also have genotyping machines... here Bob is showing me one as he starts running a set of samples.

So we'll see what results I get! I have over 200 samples from 10 countries so far, and this is just the beginning... I've only run the first 10 samples so I have a long way to go!

2010-06-13T13:45:00.004-04:00

Thanks to Sea World!

On Friday I received word that the Sea World Busch Gardens Conservation Fund has awarded me a grant to continue my manatee work in Africa. This is the second time in three years I've received funding from them, and I really appreciate the support at a time when the economy is slowly rebounding!!

At this time of year I focus on writing reports, analyzing data and preparing for the next field season in Africa. So while I seem very quiet, there is lots of work going on and I look forward to blogging about some results soon.

2010-04-17T10:01:00.004-04:00

Disney's "Oceans"

This looks like a great new movie, and Disney (who funds some of my West African manatee work) will have a large display including my research at the premiere in Hollywood on Earth Day! Exciting... I'll post photos after the event.

Click here to see a trailer of the film!

2010-04-14T08:47:00.002-04:00

Back in the USA

After another great fieldwork season in Senegal, Gabon and Ghana (7 months this year!) I arrived back in Florida last weekend. Now comes the other part of my job... writing reports, getting genetics samples exported from multiple African countries, analyzing and publishing data, and planning for next season. This summer I also hope to begin analysis of some of the genetics samples in Gainesville, which will definitely be a different kind of adventure for this field biologist who hasn't worked in a lab in years! There will be stories...

2010-04-02T08:13:00.001-04:00

Senegal: A Few More Manatees

On Monday I visited the Zoology Department at Dakar University, where they have specimens of most of Senegal's species, including a partial manatee skeleton on display (no flippers). The curator wasn't there, so I'll contact him later for information about where it came from and how long ago it was acquired, but from the size of the skeleton, it appears to be a juvenile. Unfortunately it was falling apart a bit, but I give them credit for effort, because it takes alot of work to display a manatee skeletons in a lifelike way (3-D rather than flat on a table!). I'd like to get permission to take a sample for genetics analysis, as well as a sample of the earbone for age determination (still inside the skull, which is rare in a display specimen, they usually fall out).

The skeleton also included part of a mummified manatee tail (I'm not sure what's up with the mummified manatee parts in Senegal!).

Also with the skeleton is a brief general description about West African manatees, as well as this old postcard from the Royal Belgian Museum of Natural History. The manatee drawing is pretty good, although I got a chuckle out of the two baby manatees nestled on the beach at the right side of the drawing! Clearly the artist wasn't aware manatees are completely aquatic.

Also this week, a colleague at the Senegal River Development Authority forwarded the following photos of a manatee mating herd taken in the Senegal River near the town of Dagana in July 2008. Photos of manatees in Africa are rare enough, but to capture a mating herd is truly lucky! All the following photos are courtesy of Mr. Van Kutten of SAED.

For those of you not familiar with manatee mating behavior, usually a group of males (groups of up to 10 have been witnessed in FL) pursues a female, all attempting to mate with her. Not surprisingly, the female often tries to escape her suitors, who climb all over her and chase her until they are successful. All of this activity is usually very visible to any nearby human observer, because the manatees roll in the water with backs and tails flying. In Africa unfortunately this can also put manatees at risk for hunting; I know of at least one case where hunters went out and killed manatees in a mating herd, taking advantage of the manatees temporary ambivalence towards humans.

A male manatee climbing on top of a female (who is not visible in the muddy water)

Another shot of an amorous male... you can see a tiny piece of the female's back under his flipper

Several males and alittle bit of the back of the female is visible.

Noses in the river. Often the female tries to swim away from the males, so photos such as this (of the male in pursuit) are common for mating herds.

2010-04-01T09:20:00.006-04:00

Thanks Columbus!!My longest term funder for West African Manatees, the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium Conservation Fund, has renewed my grant for a third year in a row. I really appreciate this kind of continuing support as the work continues to grow across all the countries where West African manatees occur!

The Columbus Zoo has also invited me come and give a presentation on my African manatee work once I return to the USA, so I'm looking forward to that.

2010-03-17T11:16:00.002-04:00

Bay and Paul Foundation

Yesterday I was awarded a small grant from the Bay and Paul Foundation, a new funder for Wildlife Trust. This money will go to supporting my work in Africa and to buy much needed field equipment for African colleagues starting work in their home countries. I so appreciate all the support and will put the money to good use in the field!

2010-03-16T09:12:00.034-04:00

Senegal: Casamance Was Worth the Wait!!

I've been wanting to get to the Casamance River, the southern boundary of Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, for about a year. It's been difficult because there have been a few rebel uprisings from separatists who want to break away from Senegal, so there have been a couple military interventions (not exactly a good time to go there!) and also logistically it requires a few weeks of time to plan and travel there. But finally, last week, we pulled it off thanks to great logistical help from Tomas, my Senegalese manatee colleague extraordinaire (and my fiance! :-).

We took an overnight ferry from Dakar to Ziguinchor, the largest city on the Casamance River. The ferry took 14 hours and was the hardest part of the trip, because we had some hassles with checking in my equipment, and since we booked the ferry the morning we left, we couldn't get a cabin, so instead we sat in airplane style seats for 14 hours in a room with about 50 other loud people. But it was worth it in the morning when we went up to the top deck at sunrise, just as we entered the river from the ocean. Bottlenose dolphins leapt all around the boat in the waves, and the shoreline was pristine mangroves dotted with a few small fishing villages.

Map of the lower Casamance River showing all the mangrove tributaries. Ziguinchor is on the lower right side of the map, and our final destination, Point St. George, is at the upward bend of the river in the middle of the map.
The Dakar to Ziguinchor ferry... a really nice boat!

Mangroves viewed from the ferry

Bottlenose dolphins leaping everywhere!!

My first view of Ziguinchor. It's a pretty and sleepy fishing town, and it would be hard to believe there's recently been trouble there, except that we saw lots of military everywhere in town.

Once we arrived in Ziguinchor, we headed to the local fisheries office to say hello. They had a mummified manatee head that apparently had been in their office since before 1975 (originally preserved in formalin and then allowed to dry, it was rock hard and one of the bizarrest things I've ever seen). We gave the staff manatee educational posters and they told us there were many more manatees in the past, but since no studies have been done in this region, it's impossible to quantify.

The mummified manatee head.
The next morning we arranged a car to take us back downriver to the fishing town of Elinkine, where we met El Hadj, who, with his brother Oussman, works for Oceanium Dakar and is working to establish a protected area for manatees in Point St George on the Casamance River. El Hadj took us by boat to Point St George, a trip of about 2 hours through the mangroves. Pt. St George is of particular interest for manatees, because there's a small freshwater spring just offshore and manatees come there to drink everyday. Sometimes up to 30 manatees a day visit the spring, the largest gathering spot I've heard of in Africa (which is why I'd been trying to get here for a year!). The Casamance River is extremely salty, infact the salinity is higher than the ocean. Manatees don't get all the freshwater they need from the food they eat, so they need to drink freshwater periodically. Studies of Florida manatees indicate that manatees living in saltwater usually travel to a freshwater source to drink approximately once a week.

After walking around the village of Pt. St. George, I went up the manatee viewing tower and waited for the manatees to show up. Like clockwork, as soon as the tide began to fall, they appeared. The water is not very clear (infact, when I snorkeled out to the spring, the visibility was about 6 inches... not great when there are big jellyfish everywhere!). So mostly what I could see of the manatees were their noses poking up at the water's surface for a breath, then their backs and tails as they dove back down to the spring. The first day there were about 6-8 manatees there, and later I saw at least 10 around the spring. Very neat and definitely a good place for me to set up a longer-term study. There is almost nowhere in Africa where manatees come with this kind of predictability, I was ecstatic!

Our host Oussman's house in Pt. St. George.

Pt. St. George already attracts a few tourists who come to see the manatees. This sign (Manatee ecology path) was in the center of the village.

The manatee viewing tower seen from the Pt St George beach.

Closeup of the tower. At high tide the water comes up past the base of the tower. At low tide it sits at the shoreline and the spring is about 50 meters offshore, within the river.

View of the beach from the top of the tower.

View of the main river from the tower, with the approximate location of the spring shown by the red arrow.
Lots of manatee noses popped up at the spring during low tides. An Oceanium student intern who worked here started a rudimentary photo ID catalog for individual manatees based on scar patterns on their tails. He identified about 15 different individuals. I plan to train Senegalese biologists to continue and expand this work in order to get a better idea of the population.
Manatee tail fluke diving back down to the spring.

This manatee's tail is covered with both barnacles and mud. Manatees get barnacles all over their bodies if the spend alot of time in saltwater. The mud is likely from the manatee rolling on the bottom. In Florida we see this behavior during the winter, when the manatees "burrow" their heads into the warmer mud at the bottom of warm water locations, but I'm not sure why these manatees are rolling. Maybe they're trying to rub off the barnacles. The water here was very warm- 26 degrees Celcius.

Mother and calf manatees diving. This was my first verified sighting of a West African manatee calf!
As I mentioned, there were LOTS of big jellyfish in the river and many others dead on the beach. I'm not sure if this was normal or not, but they were beautiful (although it was eerie swimming in the murky water knowing they were there)

I snorkeled out to the manatee spring to check the depth and salinity at low tide. I also listened for manatee vocalizations, but didn't hear any, even though I'm pretty sure there were a few in the area.

The village has buoys provided by Oceanium to mark the spring as a protected area, but they weren't in the water while we were there, and we watched several boats go right over the manatees. I will be providing recommendations to Oceanium for future conservation activities, and the first will be to put the buoys back in the water and connect them with cords so that boats can't enter the spring area!

While in Pt St George El Hadj and Oussman took us on boat excursions along the mangroves to look for manatee feeding sign, and to clam flats where manatees feed (yes, here as in several other places in Africa, manatees are known to eat clams- the proof has been found in stomach samples from dead manatees).

El Hadj (with his niece) points out manatee feeding sign in the mangroves.

Mangrove branch with cropped leaves eaten by manatees. This is the species of clam manatees eat in Casamance (Adrana senilis).

El Hadj and Oussman's father was a manatee hunter and they still had an old skull, which they gave me for my genetics research.

On our return trip to Elinkine, El Hadj showed me his father's old manatee harpoons. Culturally, manatee hunters are well-respected in Africa, and the tradition is often passed from father to son, so El Hadj is proud to own these, although luckily he doesn't use them!

Tomas checks out a very old manatee rib that El Hadj also gave me.

At the end of our trip we returned to Ziguinchor and boarded the ferry for another overnight trip to Dakar, although this time we had cabins which made the journey much more enjoyable! We sailed out of the Casamance River into the Atlantic Ocean at sunset. In Diogue, the village at the river mouth, people say they see manatees swimming in the ocean. This isn't surpising given the large number of mangrove channels in the area. El Hadj also volunteered that there are aquatic plants in the sea that manatees like to eat. You can bet I'll check that out next time!

This is definitely not the last I will see of the Casamance manatees, I'm looking forward to working with Oceanium Dakar and the Pt. St George community to develop a long-term conservation and research project there!

2010-02-23T10:43:00.006-05:00

African Manatee Work Goes Regional!!

As many of you know, it has been my hope for the past several years to create a regional network of African manatee researchers to increase communication, data collection efforts and collaboration between people working in different countries. Manatee research in Africa is still in its infancy and many people who are trying to get started have told me they feel isolated because they are the only person or organization working on manatees in their country. Additionally, people are looking for guidance on how to develop studies and begin fieldwork. And often, they don't have even basic field equipment such as binoculars, GPS units or environmental sampling tools.

For the past two years I have co-taught training workshops in Ghana for African researchers from 12 different countries, but funding for those workshops is now finished. So I am very excited to report that I have recently received my biggest grant to date from the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission to continue training and building the regional network! This will allow me to both bring researchers to active study sites in Africa to get practical experience in manatee surveys, tagging and tracking, necropsies, genetics sampling, and for me to go to some other sites to work with researchers in their home countries. It will also allow me to get some basic equipment to collaborators in need so they can get accurate manatee data in their countries. There are still alot of challenges to overcome, but I'm really looking forward to helping train and expand manatee research throughout the range of the species. So thanks very much to the Commssion for giving me this opportunity!

2010-02-22T09:25:00.016-05:00

10 days in eastern Senegal

On February 9th we headed east from Dakar towards Matam, a town on the Senegal River. This is where we rescued manatees trapped behind a dam in January 2009, and it's the place where manatees migrate in the rainy season onto a huge floodplain to feed on submerged grasses and plants in this otherwise extremely dry region. It's a 12 hour drive through dust and many small villages to get to this part of the world, so this time we split the drive up by spending a night at Lac de Guiers and arrived in Matam on the 10th.

It's hard to describe how completely the dust pervades every pore of your body in this place. This is Aziz, our driver, doing his best to fight off the dust from getting in his eyes, ears, nose and mouth (he failed, he was as red as the rest of use when we arrived).
Our first task in Matam was to recover and clean three manatee skeletons that were buried to decompose last November. Unfortunately these three manatees likely died while trying to exit the Navel dam as the waters receded after the rainy season last Fall. Unfortunately grates on the dam doors were not lifted, so they probably drowned trapped up against the grates. Some interested kids watched Tomas and I cleaning skulls. We hope at least the bones of this rare species will be useful for science and educational purposes in Senegal.
This is the burial site, in view of the dam that unfortunately killed them.
After the skulls, we checked on the rest of the bones, but found that due to the extremely dry soil (it hasn't rained here since August) they haven't finished decomposing. So we collected a few more, but we'll have to wait for the rest.

Next we checked the water level at the Navel tributary. The dam doors are now closed and this water is being used for crops, but there are still some manatees trapped inside (no one knows how many since this tributary, full of chocolate milk water, runs for miles). We scouted for them but didn't see any, and I also listened for the radio-tagged manatee (the only one still tagged from January 2009), but I didn't hear her signal at this location.

The water is slowly receding, but it's still alot higher than it was in January 2009. Unfortunately for the trapped manatees, the water needs to be lower in order for captures to occur. All the captures are done by hand nets, so the water can't be over people's heads, and we need to limit the manatees to a smaller area to catch them. But I did see several places where plants were in reach of the water, so they may still be able to find food.

Next we traveled about 35 kilometers south down the road to the town of Kanel, another part of the huge floodplain. Here the water has always formed large pools (really lakes several miles long) as the tributary dries up. So this is an area where manatees become trapped in pools, but it's not because of a dam. I learned that the first manatee captures here were in 1964, so the people here have a long history of returning the manatees to the Senegal River. We went out on the Wendou Kanel lake in a boat with a fisherman named Moutar, who took me out tracking last Fall. I was happy to see a huge area of flooded grasses and waterlilies (both known manatee food plants) along one side of the lake.

As always, I listened for the tagged manatee. Here I heard the signal a few times, but extremely faint and off to the south. It's very hard to get around this area (no roads) and even though we went to the south end of this lake, she could be in a different area.

(Photo T. Diagne) Coming in from tracking (photo T. Diagne)
The last site we visited was Patowel, another part of the tribuary cut off from the main Senegal River, approximately 7km long. The water here never completely dries up and it's an important fishing spot for the local people (the fish are refreshed during the rainy season overflow from the main river). Manatees get trapped in here every year and there are almost no plants during the dry season, so they eat fish from the fishermen's nets. This occurs in other countries as well, and African manatees are reported to eat not only fish but several species of clams throughout Africa, so they are more omnivorous than their Floirida cousins!

Patowel fisherman cast netting. They also use large nets across the entire river, which manatees break through. It's challenging to explain to the fishermen that if they don't want their nets broken, they are going to have to alter their fishing practices and leave an open space for manatees to pass by... they would not welcome hearing this from an outsider, so I discussed this with the local fisheries representative, a very enthisiastic guy who is very interested to try to find good solutions for both fishermen and manatees.
Catfish heads found in fishermen's nets after the rest of the fish were eaten by manatees.
At the end of our tip, Tomas and I attended a 2 day long multi-agency meeting hosted by Wetlands International in Matam. The meeting brought together all the interested parties in manatee issues on the Senegal River- government agencies (manatees are a protected species under the Water and Forestry Ministry, but the water bodies are overseen by the Senegal River Development Authority, and there are also local fisheries departments), NGOs (Wetlands and Oceanium Dakar, both of whom I collaborate with), and local elders from the various villages. There were also several journalists there.

The meeting was held at a hotel, but the entire group also took field trips to Navel, Wendou Kanel and Patowel. Here a fisherman in Patowel explains their concerns about the manatees. (Photo T. Diagne)
An engineer with the Senegal River Authority discussed the Navel dam... at the Navel dam. I learned alot at this meeting and it was impressive to see all the interest in finding solutions from all the different attendees. (Photo T. Diagne)

Last but not least, Tomas had learned of some old photos of manatee captures in Matam, and we tracked them down. Unfortunately they had not been well-preserved, but it was still neat to see them. Oceanium began working on manatee rescues here in 1986.

I always enjoy the trips to eastern Senegal, but it's also good to get back to Dakar and wash off the dust! I'm now planning my next field trip to southern Senegal....

2010-02-02T03:58:00.002-05:00

Onward to Senegal...

I haven't been blogging this past month because I've been working on lots of annual reports, grant applications and export permits, which are all necessary and important, but definitely not thrilling enough for commentary! I'm happy to report that I've cleared quite alot of office work off my plate now and am heading back to fieldwork. I fly to Senegal tomorrow night and am in the process of getting ready for manatee work in several parts of the country... stay tuned!

2010-01-07T05:15:00.012-05:00

Gabon: Manatee Capture!

The frustration had definitely been building. Eight days and nights around the clock setting nets and waiting, having manatees punch holes through the nets every night, second guessing our decisions about where nets should be set, and seeing manatees near the nets everyday, was making us all crazy. Not to mention the heat/humidity, the bugs and the dwindling food supply. Two team members had already had to leave and on the ninth day we knew it was our last day before the rest of the team would start having to depart back to their other lives. So we set out at our usual 5:30am a bit disheartened to say the least.

We checked the first three nets and they were empty as usual. But as we approached the fourth and last net across a small open mangrove lagoon, I noticed that it was bowed at an odd angle, no longer straight into the channel as we had left it. As we came close, stopped the boat engine and began to lift the net to check it, suddenly a manatee nose surfaced right next to one of the buoys! I think we were all in a state of shock, and that shock grew as we saw the manatee and realized it was only caught by its tail, not wrapped around the front part of its body the way they usually get caught. Luckily for us the net was wrapped in a tight knot around the tail and he could not escape. We moved him to shore alongside the boat, moving very slowly so he could breathe. The closest land we could find was an opening in the forest at the edge of the lagoon about a quarter mile away.

The manatee caught by his tail as we first found him in the quiet lagoon. Through the water you can see the net wrapped around his tail.

The manatee was given a complete health assessment including taking morphometrics (standard length and girth measurements), standard photograph views (left side, right side, dorsal, ventral, etc.), body temperature, collection of blood, genetics, fecal, urine, tear, hair and skin lesion biopsy samples. Unfortunately though, the manatee was too small to tag. He was a subadult and the smallest manatee I have recorded in Gabon so far. Manatees need to be a certain size to safely carry the GPS tags, because we don’t want do anything that could cause difficulty for the animal to live its normal life. The point of tagging is not only to track where the manatee moves, but to study behavior. The tags are built with several “weak links” that will break it off the manatee if it gets caught on anything, and they are neutrally bouyant, but they’re still built for adult manatees and this one was just too small. However, the team was excited since this is the first time many of these biological samples have been collected for the species, and this is the first live-captured manatee ever for Gabon.

As usual, a genetics sample was taken by punching a notch in the manatee's tail with a cattle ear notcher. Aside from the valuable information genetics analysis provides about the species, the resulting notch can help identify a manatee that has been peviously captured (if it is caught again in the future).
Standard length and width measurements were also taken, which means we can start to build a database for Gabon's manatees and also compare these measurements to manatees in other parts of Africa. .
I taught Ken how to draw a blood sample from a manatee...

Ken and I posing with the manatee just before we released itReleasing the manatee back into the lagoon

Although time and funding were finished for this round of captures, we were lucky to get one manatee at least, and I hope to be able to try again to tag here in the future.

2009-12-16T08:21:00.022-05:00

Gabon: Sette Cama Surprises

On the morning of 3 December, our team left Gamba and crossed the huge N'dogo Lagoon in 2 boats loaded with all of our gear. It took us just over an hour to reach the Eaux et Forets (Water and Forestry) brigade where we stayed in two houses on the lagoon, thanks to generosity from WWF. After arriving and unpacking all our gear, we scouted locations where manatees had previously been sighted, looked for and found fresh feeding sign (cropped and uprooted grasses along shorelines) and worked on our nets (which needed extra floats attached so we could see them well when something gets caught, and we tied together shorter nets to make 2 longer ones).

Loading gear and fuel into the boats in Gamba...

Anselm, Patrice and Stephane untangled nets and later Stephane and I added floats (old empty soda bottles... a different kind of recycling!)

Tom scans a cove where manatees are often seen feeding. We did see a group of three that day, just off the point of trees in front of Tom. You can see the aquatic plants (dark against the sand) under the water.

Uzoma holding one of the aquatic plants, Crinum natans, a manatee favorite. These are tiny ones, they grow to be the size of a leek.

I had a good team of 6 others with me: Stephane (Gabonese manatee researcher), Uzoma (Nigerian manatee researcher), Ken (WCS veterinarian who has previously worked with manatees in the USA), Patrice (Gabonese veterinarian), Anselm (WWF biologist) and Tom (a photographer from Save Our Seas Foundation, who funded the telemetry equipment, the boat engine and some of the other logistics). We began setting nets for manatees on the 5th. For the first 8 days of setting nets around the clock in 6 different locations (we had 2-4 nets going at once) we did not catch any manatees, despite seeing manatees in close proximity to nets everyday and setting in the same locations used by former hunters. Unfortunately some of the nets were old (they had been confiscated from hunters) and the manatees (or in some cases possibly crocs) broke through at night, leaving large holes for us to find most mornings, a very unpleasant surprise. So we were more than a bit frustrated and very tired.

Anselm casts net into the water during a set at the open cove with the aquatic plants...

Uzoma sets net at one of our mangrove sites...

...and we also set nets along grassy areas where manatees feed. As you might guess, we spent alot of time setting nets, checking nets and re-setting nets. Also second guessing where the manatees would turn up (the answer is, at almost every site, but not in the nets!)
Tags were ready to go in the boat in case we caught a manatee. Here we also had the GPS unit and some mangrove samples in theucket.
Patice and Uzo waiting in the boat in case a manatee is captured. On this day they had manatees socializing next to the boat and nets for over an hour, but none got caught!

Waiting, waiting and more waiting... Simplice (Gabonese ecoguide who came out with us one day), Anselm and Stephane watch from the mangroves.

Some people passed the time dozing, while others played with their cameras (Ken & Tom). We all fought the tsetse flies!

Anselm displays a large hole in a net made overnight

The biggest surprise for me was how hard the manatees were to catch. They were seen everyday and were definitely near the nets, yet they did not get caught. This gave me flashbacks to the captures we did in Costa Rica in 2005 (and other captures I heard about in Panama), where nets were set for weeks without catching a manatee. Anyone who thinks these elusive beasts aren't also savvy should think again!!

Here's the whole team (minus Tom, who took the photo): Patrice, Uzoma, Anselm, Ken, Lucy and Stephane.

I gave the team an A for effort, and could not help but share their disappointment. We all fell into bed exhausted everyday and nothing seemed easy. Patrice and Uzoma had to depart on 10 and 11 December, so we were left with 5 people after that. But then on the 9th (and last) day.........

2009-12-01T09:27:00.015-05:00

Gabon: The long trail to Gamba

We arrived in Gamba last night after 20 hours of driving most of the length of Gabon. Of the whole trip, only 6 hours of it was on paved road (albeit with huge potholes), the rest was sand tracks across the savannah, driving down riverbeds through the forest, flooded elephant paths and 2 tiny one-car-at-a-time ferries.

On the paved road near Lambarene, only 500 km to go!The car was stuffed with an incredible amount of gear including my new boat engine, 500m of manatee net, 5 trunks of equipment, a centrifuge, all our personal bags, coolers of food, cameras, 2 propane tanks, and 8 people. We were crammed in like sardines, but there was still room for gear to fly around as we jolted across a zillion potholes- I go hit in the head by flying objects 3 times and the driver was almost knocked unconscious by a flying spare car air filter at one point! I wish I had more photos, but most of the time I was holding on for dear life. I did take a video of the car "swimming" through one flooded area, but it's too big a file to attach here.

The car on the savannah. The "snorkel" can be seen on the passenger side, just in front of the door. This allows the car to drive through water that completely covers the hood, without flooding the engine. The driver and another passenger test the depth of water before we drive through it

The first night we arrived at the place we had reserved to stay, after 12 hot & dusty hours on the road, only to find out there were only 3 beds for 8 people. I was lucky enough to get one of the beds, but it was poor planning and most people had to sleep on the tile floor. The next day we had trouble finding food before we left the town so we went all day on 1 soda and a few crackers each. Every small town had a "security checkpoint" (apparently due to the recent elections all the local police are flexing their muscles) so I also had the pleasure of paying a $10 bribe to get our car through one checkpoint. At least it wasn't worse!

The car loaded onto the do-it-yourself ferry to cross the Panga River. A couple guys pulled ropes to get us across. While waiting for the second/motorized ferry, Stephane (right) discovered the villagers had a brand new manatee net. Hopefully we can talk to them at a later point to understand where they are hunting.

Uzoma and Stephane relax on the motorized ferry as it takes us upriver to Mayonami, on the last leg of our trip. We arrived, battered and bruised, at sunset last night, and as we pulled into Gamba there were 25 elephants feeding at the edge of town, which was a nice welcome! Luckily the 3 guys who came with me (Stephane and Patrice from Gabon and Uzoma from Nigeria) are all very easy going and helpful, so they remained cheerful throughout it all. Now we are here for 3 days to put the new boat engine on the boat & break it in, buy gas, food and other supplies, and to await the last 2 members of our team, Ken and Tom, who arrive by plane later this week. On Thursday morning we'll boat up the lagoon to our base at Sette Cama, my favorite place in Gabon. After a day of set up we should finally be ready to start captures on Friday or Saturday!

Elephants at sunset just outside Gamba (sorry, I know they look like blobs, the telephoto lens was buried somewhere in the car!)

2009-11-09T06:13:00.006-05:00

Gabon: On my Way to Tag Manatees!

I left Dakar early this morning and am now enroute to Gabon. I'll be there until the end of February and the big plan for this year is to try to capture manatees in N'dogo Lagoon, do baseline health assessments and outfit them with GPS tags to track their movements. They won't be easy to catch, they're secretive and the water is murky, but after scouting locations near Sette Cama for the past two years, I think we have a better chance there than almost anywhere else in Gabon. There are lots of manatees, no targeted hunting and lots of great habitat. And if we are successful, this will be the first time GPS tracking has been done with the species. I have a great team that will assemble for the captures in a couple weeks (after I finish preparing logistics in Libreville), and I'll introduce them shortly. I'm really looking forward to it!

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Aerial view of some of the many islands in N'dogo Lagoon.

2009-11-06T08:44:00.004-05:00

Ghana: Manatee Training Workshop 2009

I just spent an action-packed two weeks at Lake Volta, Ghana teaching a research and conservation training workshop for the West African manatee! It was great. This is my second year participating in the workshop, and co-teaching it with Patrick Ofori-Dansen from the University of Ghana. It's funded by Earthwatch and coordinated by Nature Conservation Research Center (NCRC, a Ghanian NGO). As always, it was a wonderful experience that left me energized and hopeful for the future of West African manatee conservation.

This year we had 28 applicants for 16 spaces in 2 workshops; the second one will be taught in mid-November. Most of the applicants have already started manatee work in their countries, and Earthwatch funds participants to attend, so it was a very competitive selection process. This team ended up with participants from 7 countries: Mali, Guinea, Angola, Gabon, Cameroon, Benin and Senegal. And over the past three years this program will have trained researchers from 18 countries. Not bad considering the range of the species is 21 countries! For quite a few countries we’ve also trained more than one researcher, so I think we have achieved a lot of capacity building. Aside from helping train people for field research, my greatest hope is to build a cohesive network for manatee research and conservation in West Africa, and I plan to continue to work with these dedicated folks long after the training workshops have ended.

On October 18 we packed ourselves and all our gear into a mini bus and left Accra. After a 4 hour drive and a short ferry ride, we reached the Afram Arm of Lake Volta. We stayed in a campground that was created especially for this program and is staffed by people from a nearby village. The camp has a dining and classroom hut, a kitchen, storage and bathroom huts. We stayed in tents under several large trees. Over the next 2 weeks we combined classroom lectures with an introduction to field sampling equipment and techniques. Participants also gave presentations about research in their home country, and in the evenings we also had “social sharing” where each person told their personal life story. So in a very short time everyone became close friends, there was lots of joking and laughing and comraderie. This team was different from the group I worked with last year in that it was all men, and almost everyone was from a Francophone country, and so most conversation was in French. I really enjoyed being "one of the boys!"

Here's a glimpse of the participants, where we were and what we accomplished:

The ferry that took us across the Afram Arm of Lake Volta

Ladies on the ferry, I just liked the way the sun lit up their colorful dresses
Pius from Cameroon and Cece from Guinea. Pius works with gorillas and will start manatee research in northern Cameroon for Wildlife Conservation Society; Cece is a veterinarian who has already begun manatee surveys in his country.

Abdoulaye from Mali works for the Niger River Basin Authority. Here he's laying a transect line for aquatic plant sampling in Lake Volta.
Mr. Ansah (in the crazy hat) is the class assistant and teaches the participants about environmental sampling equipment and water chemistry testing. Momar from Wetlands International in Senegal and Mendes from Angola record data. Boat trips are used to practice sampling methods.
This is Mendes doing cranial measurements on a manatee skull. Mendes works for the Angolan Ministry of the Environment and accompanied me in the field during Congo River surveys last year. He's eager to start manatee research in central Angola, where human impact is high.
Chris from Benin learns water analysis techniques from Ansah. Chris has been studying manatees in Benin for several years and is hoping to publish his data soon.
Stephane from Gabon is seen here giving a presentation on his work of the past two years: assessing the manatee bushmeat trade in central Gabon. Since he knows most of the hunters, he has been able to collect some of the most accurate data on manatee hunting anywhere in Africa.
And of course "Prof"! He's been studying manatees in Lake Volta since 1998. This was a discussion at the beginning of the workshop, to introduce the participants to all the sampling equipment: GPS, secchi disk, dissolved oxygen meter, depth sounder, etc.

Once on the water, everyone got a chance to use the equipment and record data.
We also went out very early one morning hoping to see manatees feeding. Unfortunately we didn't spot any, but we did get a beautiful sunrise.
Local fishermen

Did I mention it rained almost everyday? Camping in the mud loses it's novelty quickly! But luckily the ground dried quickly once the sun came out.
Abdoulaye from Mali in traditional garb
Enjoying the boat with Stephane and Momar...

And this is the whole team! Momar, Martin from NCRC (our awesome logistics coordinator), Ansah, Mendes, Stephane (with arms raised), Prof Patrick Ofori-Dansen, Pius, Abdoulaye, Lucy... and in front: Cece and Chris. Congratulations to the newest members of the manattee research community!

2009-10-17T10:08:00.013-04:00

Senegal: Delta Saloum

Last week I spent three days in the northern part of the Saloum Delta, a huge mangrove estuary in central Senegal. It s a beautiful area with salt flats filled with flamingoes, savannah with giant baobab trees, countless mangrove channels and lots of fishing boats. I had a chance to talk to many fishermen about manatees there and to distribute informational posters, which they eagerly took. People were very curious to learn more about a creature they consider spiritual and mysterious. Manatees are still hunted in this area, although they are rare now and only one or two are caught per year.

Interestingly, most of the manatee carcass data that Buddy Powell was able to collect for the species in the 1980's and 90's came from this area. There is a marine protected area in the south of the Delta, but I wasn't able to get there this time. I hope to do more work here in the future.

My internet connection time is limited at the moment, so here are a few pictures to give an idea of the place and what I did there:

Fishermen in Ndangane check out manatee informational posters in French to learn more about the species. They told me that only certain families are manatee hunters and that it is believed these people can communicate with the manatees. They also told me about a number of freshwater springs in the area where manatees come to drink.
Young boys with posters and stickers. Although the manatee is hunted here, it is also revered and there's a general sense of fascination about them. People say they are no longer hunted in the protected area because they know they will get in trouble. It's a start to protection!

Beautiful, brightly colored fishing boats at Ndangane
The view at the place where we stayed- gorgeous!
There are numerous intiatives to re-plant mangroves in the area- some efforts are led by NGOs while others are led directly by the people and their communities. This photo shows 2 species (the ones on top of the sandbar are a different species from the one in the water, I need to get correct species names!). It is great to see environmental initiatives going strong here, hopefully that will lead to awareness and protection for many species. We were able to go to one of the freshwater springs by boat but it was late in the day and I couldn't jump in and check it out. It is hard to see, but it's situated between the two sandbars in the photo below. Manatees generally come at night, and I am sure this is related to hunting pressure.
Flamingoes at sunset on the mudflat
I also met with village elders at Ndangane who had interesting perspectives on hunting techniques

At the end of the trip I met a very cool guy named Doudou at Joal (left). He has worked on fisheries bycatch issues previously and had reports of manatee carcasses going back many years. Here he shows me a manatee bone he took from a carcass in 2004 (that's his wife in the middle). As we drove along we came upon this sign purely by chance! Of course we searched for and found the place and met the owner, Anne-Catherine, who is a neat lady. After working in the pharmacutical industry for many years she decided to start an ecotourism venture that includes both environmental and cultural awareness. Eventually she hopes to open a hotel there, but for now there is a nice restaurant, a library and a beautiful lodge overlooking the water. We had a great conversation about manatees and I hope to plan future work together. This manatee trap was at Source Aux Lamantins and shows how hunters set traps in mangroves where manatees feed. They sit on top of the trap at night and when the manatee bumps the trap, they harpoon it. Luckily this one is no longer in use, it's only for educational purposes.
This morning I arrived in Accra, Ghana, and tomorrow I head out to the Afram Arm of Lake Volta to co-teach a manatee research and conservation workshop for African biologists. We have 8 participants from 8 different countries and I'll write lots more about it when I return to internet in 2 weeks!

2009-10-10T09:22:00.008-04:00

Senegal: Diama Dam On our way back to Dakar we stopped at the Diama Dam, built in 1984 near St. Louis at the mouth of the Senegal River. This dam now traps manatees in the river and although they have well over 600 km of river to use, as well as Lac de Guiers and much more area during the rainy season when the river floods the plains, these manatees are isolated here with no way to leave or breed with other manatee populations. In the dry season, food plants can be scarce, and although there doesn't seem to be much targeted hunting, manatees do get caught in fishing nets and drown fairly frequently. And of course they get caught behind smaller dams near Matam and Kanel. At the southeastern end of the river they are hemmed in by a hydroelectric dam in Mali. So there are many challenges for this population.

The dam in Mali provides power far into the interior of Senegal; these power lines near Kanel are over 200 km away from the dam.

But there's good news too. There is very good habitat in Lac de Guiers (a huge man-made lake which provides the drinking water for all of Dakar and water for farm irrigation for hundreds of miles surrounding the lake) with lots of the manatees favorite food plants. Dams keep the water in Lac de Guiers high year round and the manatees have learned they no longer need to migrate back to the river during the dry season.

Lots of water lilies and grasses in Lac de Guiers

And as I mentioned in my previous post, they have lots of food on the flood plain during the rainy season. From what I've seen so far, I think the Senegal River supports a fairly healthy manatee population, and I'm happy that many people, government agencies and private organizations here are interested to conserve them.

Downstream and seaward of the Diama Dam is the Senegal River delta, and it is unknown if manatees still use this area as well. It will be interesting to try to find out!

Water flowing out of the Diama Dam towards the ocean.

2009-10-09T11:43:00.018-04:00

Senegal: To Kanel and Back

Our trip last week got off to a rough start. The first day we left Dakar at 6am and our rented car and driver (many rented cars here come with a driver) drove us 3 hours north of Dakar to the colonial era town of St. Louis. We had breakfast there and afterward expected to continue on the long trip to Matam. However, at this point it became clear there was a misunderstanding. The driver had been told we only wanted to go as far as St. Louis. Many calls ensued between the driver and the owner of the car, and after a heated discussion it became apparent we had no choice but to return to Dakar, because the car’s owner did not want us taking the car further into the desert. So we then spent another 3 ½ hours driving all the way back to Dakar, then there was a heated discussion with the owner who did not want to refund any of the money we paid for 5 days of rental, and finally the search for another car. At that point it was too late to begin the long trip again, so we tried again the next day.

The second attempt was a successful, if hot and dusty, 13 hour trip to Matam in eastern Senegal. On the way we got the first of three flat tires during the trip- the paved road is basically a series of giant pot-holes much of the way, and cars weave between them, coming at each other and missing by inches, driving off the paved road onto the dirt road that borders and continuing at high speed. Every car carries 2 or 3 spare tires. Huge herds of goats, sheep and cows graze everywhere and often stand in the road, we had to nudge the car through them countless times every hour. It was amazing to see how the desert tansformed with the rains; what had been a few scrubby trees in the red sand last January were now lush trees in a sea of grasses, crops of sorghum and melons, with the flood plain of the Senegal River clearly in view (the actual river is normally out of sight from the road). Dashboard view: Koran and prayer beads, dust, small towns, lots of goats and donkey carts!

Once we reached Matam, an air-conditioned room and a cold shower was an absolute slice of heaven. We were also treated to wonderful meals and hospitality by Commandant Seck and his family- he oversees the dams and irrigation for the Matam area and has been extremely interested to help manatees from getting trapped by the dams. He was the person who donated use of a tractor and trailer last January so we could tasnsport the stranded manatees back to the main Senegal River.

For each of the next 3 days we started out at 5am and drove another hour south from Matam to the town of Kanel. Between Matam and Kanel the river had expanded from its channel into an enormous flood plain, approximately 35 km long and 12 km wide. This is only one of many areas along the length of the river that has flooded and covered huge areas with water, flooding trees and allowing catfish and manatees to swim where cows graze in the dry season. For the manatees it becomes a wonderful feeding area, with tall grasses and water lilies stick up through the water. For us it was incredible to see the transformation, but daunting to try to find one tagged manatee in miles of water with only a non-motorized canoe!
Sunrise at Kanel

Egrets fly near flooded trees. The blobs at the top of the tree are weaverbird colony nests.

We went out with three guys from Kanel who in previous years helped rescue stranded manatees when the water dried up. They had seen several mating herds the week before and took us to those places, but unfortunately hours of scanning the water in the scorching sun didn’t turn up any manatees. At the same time we listened for the tagged manatee, who was supposed to be in the area, but we didn’t hear the VHF signal. It was still really interesting to see the area though and to realize the importance of the flooding in the manatee's feeding life cycle.

Heading out in a tippy canoe with all our gear, the air still and hot
Tomas shows the guys how to use the VHF receiver.
Scanning, scanning, scanning...
People from the village were swimming and washing their animals in the flooded plain

On the first evening we went to the Navel Dam, the place where were rescued and tagged manatees last January. It was astounding to see the difference in the water levels:
This is the Navel Dam in November 2008 near the height of the dry season (photo courtesy of P. Fernandez de Larrinoa)
This is the Navel Dam last week, with water level 9 meters higher

This was the Navel manatee rescue site last January. Note the cliff edge in the foreground.

This is a photo taken at the same site last week, with water almost to the top of the cliff.

I brought along the VHF receiver to the dam, because the tagged manatee could be anywhere and the receiver only works at a range of about 3 km. After listening to static for awhile, suddenly we heard the signal! It was incredible luck considering the size of the flooded area. The signal was faint, meaning the manatee was not close by, and came intermittently, meaning she was probably traveling, so the tag was only coming to the surface of the water every few minutes. We listened for 45 minutes before it got dark. It was frustrating not to be able to get closer to see her, but there are no roads along the river's edge and we didn't have a boat to search by water.

Tomas took this photo just as I heard the signal... surprise and happiness!

We tried listening for the signal the following two evenings at Navel, but we didn't hear it again. I hoped she was heading south and that maybe we would hear the signal from the Kanel side during our boat surveys, but the area was too huge and our ability to cover it too limited. However, it was still great to hear the tag at all, to know she's still in the general vicinity of Matam and that the VHF portion of the tag is working.

While in Matam we had nice meetings with many of the people who are interested to help the manatees: Eaux et Forets (Water and Forestry), the Matam and Navel Fisheries Commissioners. After 3 days we started back to Dakar, making a few stops along the way, which I'll write more about next.

2009-09-28T11:16:00.001-04:00

Senegal: Off to the Desert!

Since my arrival in Dakar I've been enjoying time with my fiance, Senegalese turtle and manatee researcher Tomas Diagne, and planning logistics for future manatee work here. After 2 weeks of planning we are now ready to go into the field!

It seems funny to say we're going to the desert to track manatees! But it's true... In late August the last of the manatees we tagged in the Senegal River this past January moved into a tributary near the town of Wendou Kanel, in easternmost Senegal at the border with Mauritania. Aside from the river itself, this is a very dry, sandy landscape with few trees at the edge of the Sahel. We've received reports that the tagged manatee is part of a big group regularly being seen in the tributary, and that mating activity has been observed (manatee mating is a group activity with many males pursuing a female... usually tails and backs can be seen flailing at the surface of the water as they all clamber to reach the object of their desire!). This is a good opportunity to see manatee behavior and document the number of animals using this tributary, as well as a chance to discuss the situation with the local people.

The rainy season is still in full swing here so there's plenty of water in the tributaries, but as the rain ends next month and the water starts falling, we want to ensure these manatees won't be stuck in this area as they have been before. Like other tributaries, this one has a dam whose gates will be closed as the water falls, in order to hold back water for crops. Unfortunately manatees get stuck behind these dams and are at risk of dying before the next rainy season due to the water drying up and/or lack of food. When the dams were built no one knew the manatees used these tributaries during the rainy season (they are usually very secretive and difficult to see in the muddy water), but it has now become an ongoing problem in this region and manatees have to be moved out of the tributaries back to the main river every year (see my postings from January 2009).

So I'm interested to see this area during the rainy season and to try to get an idea of the numbers of manatees using this system. I'll post photos and a report in a week when I return to the internet!

2009-09-05T21:45:00.004-04:00

Building and Packing

Some people have the nice but misguided belief that manatee research is all just swimming in beautiful clear, blue water watching the manatees eat and play, and occasionally scratching them. Ummm.... no. I wear many hats in this job, most of which I had no idea about when I started many years ago. Plumber, electrician, cartographer, politician, boat mechanic, grant writer, and occasionally... biologist. I almost never see blue water (think chocolate milk filled with crocs and hippos). But I will say I'm never bored. Lately my job has been 100% logistics.

For the past several weeks I've been preparing for the next field season in Africa. Planning travel to various field sites, building manatee telemetry equipment, refreshing my memory about GPS tags (since I haven't worked with them since 2004), buying supplies... everything I'll need for 6 months of training workshops, surveys, captures, health assessments, tagging and tracking. The amount of cables, datasheets, sample vials, bug spray, and other little things needed is daunting. Bob, I can't find my frisbee! (For the rest of you, it's not used for play...)

Manatee tagging equipment is all built by hand. We tag manatees by putting a belt around the tail, which has a nylon tether attaching to a buoy tag that floats behind the manatee. After 4 days of measuring, foam injection, more measuring, gooey marine sealant, pounding, cutting, butane torching, attaching bolts and buckles, heat-shrinking and realizing I glued my flip flop to the floor, the manatee belts are finished and ready to go! They have several nice features: sonic tags that emit a signal underwater so I can hear the manatee with a hydrophone even if it loses the GPS tag, bolts that corrode so the belt will fall off even if we can't relocate the manatee, and best of all- snazzy new programmable release mechanisms that will (hopefully) pop the belt off the manatee at the end of the study. Thanks Margie and FWC for letting me use your telemetry lab to build these!
Now that I've bought and piled up equipment and supplies for weeks, the trick is to get it all in 2 trunks and 2 duffles that each weigh 50 lbs. or less...

On Wednesday I leave the USA for 6 months. I'm headed first to Senegal for 5 weeks, then to Ghana for just over 2 weeks, and then hopefully Gabon for 4 months. I say "hopefully" because there has been a bit of unrest there recently after presidential elections, so I'm hoping it will subside before early November. The plan is to capture several manatees in central Gabon and deploy the first ever GPS tracking tags for the species. Now the fun part begins!

2009-09-04T21:31:00.002-04:00

Senegal: A couple more surprises....

Our last tagged manatee in Senegal (the female in the Senegal River on the far eastern side of the country, at the border with Mauritania) made another big move northward again in late July. But this time she left the main Senegal River and entered a tributary in early August. This is not the tributary we rescued her from last January, and as far as we know, manatees have not been recorded in this one before. It looks like she's swimming on dry land in the Google Earth image below, but that's just because the satellite image was taken during the dry season, when the tributaries dry up completely. So it's both interesting but worrisome, because the rainy season will end in a month and we don't want her trapped again. So hopefully someone will get out there to look at the location soon.

The other surprise for us is that the tag is still transmitting at all. The batteries for the GPS are supposed to last about 6 months, but it has now been transmitting for over 8 months! It's great for us to get as much information as possible... and also to know she may have just entered another area where she could become trapped as the water falls. So we're learning alot.

I'm returning to Senegal in a few days, so I hope to have new information about this tagged manatee soon.

2009-08-13T19:25:00.004-04:00

TributeThe manatee community was stunned and saddened today to learn of the death of our colleague Akoi Kouadio of Cote D'Ivoire. Akoi worked tirelessly with West African manatees for many years after being trained by Buddy Powell in the mid-1980's. He did his PhD work on the manatees of Fresco Lagoon in Cote D'Ivoire and also did surveys in the Congo and several other African countries. He had the longest running manatee research program in Africa and was an advisor to many. I first met Akoi in 2000 when we both participated in Buddy's manatee captures in Belize. More recently we worked together on the CMS West African Manatee Action Plan, and celebrated when it was completed and signed by 15 countries last October. Akoi was a shy man, and probably would've been embarrassed at any kind of public tribute, but his dedication was absolute and we all will miss him greatly.

2009-08-11T10:09:00.006-04:00

Senegal Tagged Manatee Update

As some of you will recall, last January I satellite tagged three manatees in eastern Senegal as part of a multi-agency group that rescued them from tributaries where they were trapped behind dams (See posting from 1/31/09). We released the manatees back into the Senegal River and they have been tracked since then by my colleagues at CBD-Habitat (the Spanish NGO that bought the tags) and Oceanium Dakar (Senegalese NGO).

In early April both the red and blue tagged manatees were in the Senegal River within several kilometers of each other. They were staying in the same area, likely feeding. Then, very suddenly, the red tag gave an accurate location in the village of Bababe, several kilometers inland from the river. The blue tag stopped transmitting it's location a day or two later. Oceanium Dakar sent two biologists to Bababe (a 10 hour bus trip) to recover the red tag, and when they arrived they found fishermen in the village had not only it, but the belt that goes around the manatee's tail as well. The fishermen said the manatee's tag had gotten entangled in their nets, the manatee had broken free and left the tagging gear. Infact, this is exactly what the tagging gear is designed to do- break off the manatee if it becomes entangled- because obviously we don't want the gear to cause the manatee any injury or to drown. The tag had fishing net wrapped tightly around the antenna (in the center of the photo below, courtesy of Kader Diagne).

After finding the red tag, the biologists used a radio tracking receiver to try to locate the blue tag on the river. It was later found in another village near Bababe and also had gotten caught in fishing nets. (Photo courtesy of Kader Diagne)
A fisherman shows where a manatee ripped a hole in his net. (Photo courtesy of Kader Diagne)

So while it's a disappointing that the tags came off, it's encouraging to know the safety mechanisms worked, and the travel data gained during the 3 months they were tagging is very valuable. This is the first time this technology has ever been used for West African manatees, so we're learning alot, both about the manatees and how the tags function in this part of the world.
Meanwhile, the yellow tagged manatee (the female) is still out there! She has made multiple movements up and down the Senegal River (shown in the map below by different colored tracks, courtesy of CBD-Habitat), and twice has come within 17 miles of crossing into Mali.
Now that 6 months have passed, the battery in the GPS unit in her tag is dying, but the tag can still be located by the VHF signal. So hopefully she can be relocated and the tag recovered. Even if we don't find her, the equipment is designed with bolts that corrode, so it will fall off. There is alot of data to be analyzed (tags also tell us things like water temperature and how much the manatee moves between each satellite fix, so we can tell if they are resting or traveling). I'm looking forward to continued collaboration with folks in Senegal to learn about their manatees!

2009-08-04T20:12:00.002-04:00

Thanks Angola folks!!

It's been great working with both the WCS folks (Tim, Sal, Howard, Angela, Betania & Antonio) and the Angola LNG Team. Thanks to them we were able to do the first manatee surveys in the lower Congo River. So thanks to Sheryl, Geoff, Bert, Mary and....

Stuart, who made sure all the logistics happened, made us feel welcome on base and tells great jokes (or maybe it's just his Scottish accent that makes me laugh)
Joao, translator extraordinaire!
Warren (with a little bush snake), always ready to come upriver or slice manatee bone for DNA samples
Mike (who really doesn't want to pet the snake) helped get me to the hunter's village when I needed to last summer and Tim, who helped with DNA samples and survey trips.

The boat crew... they came a long way in their boating skills in the last year and even got to see their first manatee. Perreira (left) and Eduardo (right). Junior, the new environmental technician, is in the middle.
Wilson, community liason officer who translated for me

It's been a good experience and I hope we will publish some good new information from it all.

2009-07-27T13:15:00.005-04:00

Harpoons

Last August when I came to Soyo I learned that the only manatee hunter for the area, Mr. Domingos, had died a week before I arrived. I visited his village on that trip and found four manatee harpoons there. Since then I’ve been working to try to find a way to get them “off the street” so that no one else in this area will take up manatee hunting. Angola LNG generously agreed to trade supplies to the Domingos family for the harpoons and a specialized net Mr. Domingos used for catching manatees. On Wednesday Joao and I met with Mr. Domingos’ widow and youngest son Lando to discuss the terms of the exchange. In return for the manatee harpoons and net, Angola LNG has offered them 6 bags of cement, 4 fishing nets, line and floats for the nets, 8 boxes of hooks and a large cooler. This is all very valuable, especially since the son is a fisherman. They presented us with 2 very old, rusted harpoon tips and the son agreed to go upriver with us the following day to collect the rest at a village. Mrs. Domingos said a third harpoon was locked in a neighbor’s house, but they could give it to us later.

Joao, Mrs. Domingos, me and Lando Domingos meeting at their village near Soyo

On Thursday we dropped Lando off at the village of Pendi to gather the rest of the harpoons and the net while we did our river surveys. When we returned to Pendi I had hoped to see him waiting on shore with lots of equipment, and was sadly surprised to find him standing there with one more very old rusted harpoon tip and nothing else. When we asked him where the rest was, he said his cousin had deployed the manatee net in the river to try to catch a manatee, and it had disappeared. He claimed a manatee or “big fish” had probably swum off with it. He didn’t volunteer anything about additional harpoons and when we asked him, he only referenced the one his mother had mentioned. Joao explained to Lando that the deal for the trade is that he turn over all the equipment, so we cannot give him anything until he does. It was pretty obvious he had hoped to give us a few old, unusable harpoons and then we would just turn over all the goods to him, but he began to realize on the trip home that we meant to give him nothing until he turned over the rest. He says he’ll try to get the net back.

What Lando doesn’t realize yet is that I photographed all the harpoons last summer just after Mr. Domingos died. Each tip has a unique design since they were all hand made, and the ones I photographed are in much better condition. So it’s very easy to tell whether or not we’re being given the ones that are still usable. So far I believe Lando has turned over one of the four I photographed. Even though I had to leave Angola, Joao and Mary (the socio-economic advisor and Joao’s boss) will continue to work with the Domingos family to recover all the gear. I was a bit disappointed that it didn’t happen while I was there, since I’ve been working to broker this deal for a year, but in the end I hope it will still mean the end of manatee hunting in this area. And we definitely made some progress! I just have to remind myself that nothing happens quickly in Africa.

These are the three harpoon tips we have received so far. Their hunting days are over, and hopefully we'll find a place in Angola to display them as part of a cultural heritage exhibit.

The newest Angola LNG boat was named the Manatee! So maybe I've managed to raise some awareness on the base :-)

2009-07-25T02:04:00.018-04:00

Congo River Days

On Tuesday we boated 40km up the Congo River from the mouth, to several tributaries where I have been on previous trips and interviewed villagers about manatees. Accompanying me was Tim B. (the Angola LNG wildlife specialist), Wilson (a translator since I don’t speak Portuguese, Kisolongo or Lingala), Junior (Angola LNG environmental team assistant) and our two boat drivers who have taken me on almost every trip, Eduardo and Perreira. We stopped at the local Navy base, villages of Kibaka, Nzadi Caca and a new village I had not been to before. At Kibaka and Nzadi Caca they still see manatees everyday, throughout the year. They said there has been no targeted hunting since the hunter died last year, but that occasionally manatees are getting caught in fishing nets, and of course they eat them when they do. I can't fault people for making use of the meat once the manatee has drowned, this area is very poor. We didn’t see any manatees as we traveled several tributaries, but unfortunately we also didn’t really have time to sit and wait for them anywhere.

Eduardo and Perreira, doing one of their many radio check-ins to base.
Back at Nzadi Caca. The village continues to grow as they add more clam shells and then build their houses on top of them.
We interviewed the guys in Nzadi Caca while they skewered clams to sell

View from the new village we visited

Woman making thatch roof panels at Kibaka We released the baby python while we were upriver On Thursday we went upriver again, and this time Joao accompanied me as translator. We didn’t go as far upriver, but explored some new tributaries I had not been to before. It still amazes me how many hundreds of miles of tributaries there are here, and that there are very few people living along them. We interviewed several fishermen and stopped at a manioc plantation (manioc is a root vegetable, also known as cassava). Although there is plenty of good habitat and favored food plants in the area we went, people there said they don’t see manatees very often. There were no hunters in this area; they only knew of Mr. Domingos, who died last year.

Some of the tributaries here are half a mile wide and 13 meters deep, while others are narrow channels (but usually still 4-5 meters deep). Most of this area is still pristine, with very few villages or other signs of people.

Watching the GPS map as we travel the new rivers.

One of the fishermen we interviewed as we explored several new tributaries. This woman at the manioc plantation proudly showed me her fish. She and her husband said they don't see manatees frequently there, but occasionally they (and hippos) travel by in the river.
Young guinon that was a pet at the manoic plantation, tied to a tree. Beautiful little monkey, I felt sorry for it.
Nice skink I saw at the manioc plantation. (this one's for you Tess!)

2009-07-20T12:40:00.013-04:00

Angola Trip #3

It’s been almost a year since I’ve been here in Soyo, so it’s interesting to be back. It takes the better part of 2 days to get here; I flew from Tampa to Houston, spent the night, then flew from Houston directly to Luanda, the capital of Angola (15 hours, 7640 miles), then took another short flight up to Soyo, in northern Angola. I arrived Sunday afternoon, checked into my room in a nice new house on the base and then was invited to a wine and cheese party! Certainly a nice way to end the journey.

Landing in Luanda... it's the dry season, but no matter when I come, the city always has this brown dusty haze, I've never seen it look clear.
Coming in to Soyo we flew over the Congo River and this village. I've been here by boat before to check out the large grassy area (ie manatee salad bar) Soyo AirportOn Monday I sampled 36 new manatee bones that were brought to the base by the deceased manatee hunter’s wife since my last trip. These bones were fresher than most of the previous ones we found at the hunter’s village last August, which is hopefully good news for DNA extraction. Tim, the wildlife advisor on base, enthusiastically cut all the samples with a hacksaw as I labeled them. He also showed me some of the cool animals he’s recently found on the base (which will be relocated back to the wild off base).

Most of the manatee bones were ribs. Although it's a bummer that these animals were hunted, hopefully their DNA will help us better understand the species.
Tim cutting samples- we take about a 3 inch sample of bone from each. Puff Adder, quite a dangerous snake... I was not actually this close!
Pelusios castaneus, a local species of freshwater turtleBaby python as wrist accessory

2009-07-10T12:09:00.005-04:00

Looking forward....

Today colleagues and I announced the next round of African manatee conservation training workshops, to be held in Ghana in October and November. These training sessions, which are held over 2 weeks as we camp on Lake Volta, are one of my favorite things that I do in Africa. It's a rare opportiunity to be able to spend a nice long period of time with a group of people who are trying to start or continue manatee research and conservation in their countries, and there's alot of comraderie and a sense of shared purpose. So I'm excited to continue planning for that. This is the last year Earthwatch will fund these training programs (they set out to do 3 years and this is it!) but I plan to continue similar training on a smaller level in other African countries in the future, since capacity building is included in all my research work.

If you are an African national interested in learning more about the training workshops (the application deadline is August 10) please submit a comment to this posting and I will forward the information.

But before all that, I'm headed back to Angola next week for a quick 10 day trip to do another round of manatee surveys in the Congo River. It'll be great to get back out in the field after several months of being chained to my desk working on budgets and reports! So I'll have fieldwork adventures to post.

I took this last August, a man using a small mangrove tree as a sail heads up the Congo River

2009-06-23T08:31:00.003-04:00

Wildlife Trust highlights my African work

...in their June newletter and on their website. Also on the home page is an interview I did about Florida manatees and power plants. Check them out!

2009-06-03T20:14:00.004-04:00

The University of Florida has awarded me a 4 year stipend and tuition coverage for my PhD work on West African manatees! I'm really excited and a bit overwhelmed by this generous award. It will certainly help ease the burden of my fundraising efforts so I can focus on my research, and it will also give me the time to take those classes I'm going to need (thankfully not many, but I'll be struggling my way through BioChem!). My dissertation research will focus on the status, distribution and ecology of the West African manatee using genetics and behavioral tools. I'm looking forward to working with the other manatee researchers at UF, they are a very supportive and fun bunch, and hopefully they can teach me something about genetics analysis, since this field researcher hasn't been in a laboratory in a long, long time! Stay tuned for stories about broken glassware...

2009-05-20T12:54:00.008-04:00

Disney comes through again!!

I recently received word that the Disney Conservation Fund has awarded me another year of funding! This news could not have come at a better time. This money will allow me to focus both on manatee behavioral and baseline health research in Gabon and on capacity building, research and educational outreach work in other West African countries. Yippeee!!!

2009-05-01T13:00:00.003-04:00

Mamiwata art exhibition

(painting by Moyo Ogundipe, 1999, image courtesy of NY Times)

Aside from real manatees, I'm also fascinated by the Mamiwata spirit that many people believe is embodied by the manatee. Mamiwata is depicted as a woman, mermaid, seductess, even women's labor union organizer as well as many other forms, both in Africa and the Caribbean. My friend Sarah recently alerted me to a Mamiwata art exhibition currently going on at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art in Washington DC, which just got a nice review in the NY Times. The NY Times link also has some cool images of on the art on display, if you can't get to DC.

2009-04-14T15:00:00.001-04:00

Posters are ready to go!

Manatee informational posters in French that I created with Aimee Sanders, a graphic design and outreach speacialist working in Gabon, are now printed and ready to be distributed! These posters were created with funding from my USFWS Wildlife Without Borders grant for training and outreach work to help conserve West African manatees. I'm really happy with the way they turned out!
The main caption reads (for those of you who don’t speak French): West African Manatees are rare…they need your help to survive! Text boxes on the left side explain that manatees reproduce slowly so hunting increases their risk of extinction, that they need clean water and healthy habitats to survive so please keep waterways clean, and to please tell your friends and family not to hunt manatees or buy or eat manatee meat. The range map on the right side says that manatees are found in rivers, mangroves, lakes and coastal waters of central and west Africa.

Unfortunately since it's extremely difficult to get good photos of wild manatees in their natural habitat (believe me, I’ve been trying for 3 years!), I had to use photos of Florida manatees, but the species look quite similar and I was careful to use photos of animals in darker water similar to African habitat (although clearer).

Most people have never seen a live manatee and because they are hard to observe, people see them as shrouded in mystery and/or are even afraid of them, so the idea is to give some general information about them, to show some photos to hopefully remove some of the mystery and to raise awareness that they need protection. This poster was purposely designed to be very general because it targets a wide range of audiences, from school children to national park staff, tourists, teachers, resource managers and the general public. It was also designed to be used in multiple Francophone countries to help spread the awareness message as widely as possible. I’ll start giving them out in Gabon and Senegal, and I hope to get them to colleagues working in other countries as well.

2009-03-10T12:31:00.003-04:00

I received word last week that I have been awarded a grant from Save Our Seas Foundation for manatee tagging in Gabon! I am very excited, I've been working to raise money for this for the past 3 years!! The award will fund 2 GPS tags, belt and tether attachments, satellite time, some tracking gear, boat fuel for tracking, a stipend for a Gabonese technician to help with tracking and alittle of my salary. I now need to raise the rest of my salary so that I am able to do the 6 months of fieldwork required, but I have fingers crossed for several other pending applications. This will be the first time this technology has been used to study West African manatees, so it is really going to be cool! I plan to go back to Gabon to do this work in Fall 2009.

2009-03-10T11:00:00.010-04:00

Thanks!

I arrived back in Florida last week and am still catching up with myself. It was a productive but exhausting 6 months in Africa! I am looking forward to unpacking for alitte while and focusing on the next steps for work in Africa, which is basically fundraising. More on that next... Most importantly though, I'd like to extend my annual huge thanks to all those folks who helped me so much in the field this year.

In Gamba and Sette Cama, Gabon: Bas, Bas, Cathy, Richard, Joesph, DeDe, Jean-Pierre and all of the WWF Gamba and Ibonga staff. Also Herman for allowing me to visit his property and for all his manatee information. And Andrea and Sylvie for companionship in the field.

Bas, Bas, Andrea and Sylvie

Team Torquatus! Ziko, Cathy, Richard and Joesph who shared the fantastic WWF house at Sette Cama with me and helped with manatee work on top of their mangebey research.
In Libreville, Gabon: Aimee, Alden, Heaven, Pierre, Ruth, Michelle, Joe, Christian, Maite, Mr. Tchen, Pauwel and Stephane. Also thanks to Angela, Matt, Miguel, Tariq, Danae and Gary for keeping me laughing!

Ruth as a leatherback with Aimee laughing from the doorway

Pierre and Michelle

In Senegal: Tomas, Papis, Prisca, Pablo, Luis M., Haidar, Victor, Paco, Cristina, Junior, Luis, Iris, Momar, Madame Thiam, Emma, and all the fisheries people at Matam and Navel.

Planning meeting in Dakar before the manatee captures
Veterinary student Prisca and Biologist Papis
Momar of Wetlands International and Madame Thiam of Senegal National Parks

Last but certainly not least! Even though they were back in Florida, I am thankful for such great support and help from Cyndi, Susan K, Monica, Julie, Bonde, Margie and Chip. Your help from afar is appreciated more than you will know!

2009-02-28T07:50:00.016-05:00

Gabon: Fernan Vaz surveys

Unfortunately the first 3 days at Olako were an exercise in frustration. The lodge manager could not seem to organize a boat to take me out on the lagoon and just kept putting me off. The boat drivers were unwilling to talk to me until I finally called the owner, who I had originally made my arrangements with. The staff at this lodge is only used to dealing with tourists, not researchers, so I don’t think they knew what to do with me, but it still shouldn’t have been as difficult as it was. Fortunately the owner was able to remedy the situation immediately by assigning a driver to me. In the meantime I had plenty of time to catch up on other writing, but that’s not what I came here to do.

Finally on Tuesday afternoon we got out on the lagoon. We headed to the southwest corner where there were no villages. As we cruised around the coves I was surprised to find that even at the furthest reaches we would see logging roads cutting through the forest to the lagoon. The habitat was good for manatees but we didn’t see any.

Boat traffic going by in front of the lodge. Fernan Vaz definitely has the most barge traffic of any lagoon in Gabon.

logging road at the end of a quiet cove

There are some very pretty areas where the savannah comes right down to the edge of the lagoon

For the next week I surveyed different parts of the lagoon and it was evident there is a larger human population, because there are only small patches of forest or savannah between each group of houses or village. We did go up several beautiful rivers that had no human inhabitants or signs of fishing, and there we saw more wildlife, including the relatively rare African Finfoot (the male pictured below as well as a female and chicks) and a turtle. I was happily surprised that these animals didn’t flee at the site of our boat as they do almost everywhere in Gabon, and I was told later by a local guide that almost no one goes up these rivers so the animals are more tame. He also said both manatees and hippos are reported in these places. Unfortunately I didn’t see any the day I was there.

Male African Finfoot, Podica senegalensis
West African Black turtle, Pelusios niger, resting on a log

The rivers were much more peaceful than the lagoon

I was able to interview several fishermen and local guides in Ombooue who told me that they see manatees here throughout the year, but only at night. Fishermen see them feeding along the grassy areas as they set nets, and one man said he sometimes sees a couple at a time, but they always flee. He told me there are no specialist manatee hunters here because there aren’t many manatees, but that occasionally one will get caught in a fishing net and then it is eaten. A local guide told me he had seen 3 manatees rolling with tails flapping at the surface of the water (he described it as playing, but it was likely mating behavior) in the Rembo N’komi, the river at the south east corner of the lagoon. Of everyone I spoke to, only one person had a recent sighting (several months ago) of a manatee in the lagoon during the day, all other sightings reports were at night and in rivers.

On a survey up the Rembo N’komi I visited the small town of Ndougou, which really only exists as a place where roads lead into the interior so barges unload trucks and equipment for logging and oil companies, and smaller boats are loaded with bananas from nearby plantations headed to market in Gabon’s bigger cities. In just the 2 hours I was there, five big barges came to unload. All are coming from Pt. Gentil and traversing the length of Fernan Vaz Lagoon to the river, then going upriver to Ndougou. The river is deep, I recorded 11m and 10.6m in several places, but with the amount of boat traffic I would imagine manatees stay away from the village. The smaller boats have 6 engines on the back, which as I know all too well from Florida, could be very lethal to a manatee, but there are no reports of manatees being hit by boats and I suspect they avoid the area because of the noise. The good news is the barges and most other boats all follow the same course through the lagoon. The river had several smaller quiet branches with no villages and the mouth at the lagoon was a broad shallow area with miles of papyrus plants, so some habitat was good.

Another logging road. You can see the size of the logs (huge!) in comparison to the children playing at the river's edge.

Another day we went up the lagoon to its mouth at the ocean. There is a huge area of mangrove habitat and some human presence, but the owner of Olako Lodge told me this was where he most frequently has seen manatees. I was also happy to see no evidence from the oil spill that happened here a year ago.
mouth of the lagoon to the sea
At the end of my two weeks we had several days of non-stop torrential rain, making visibility very poor. Rainy season is kicking into high gear again after the annual shorter, drier period here known as the Petite Seche (little dry season). So unfortunately I will leave here without seeing a manatee, but from all my interviews I am sure they are here, although I suspect in lesser numbers than the N’gowe and N’dogo Lagoons south of here.

2009-02-28T06:28:00.015-05:00

Gabon: Port Gentil to Olako Lodge

I’m back in Libreville after 2 weeks working on Fernan Vaz Lagoon. There was no internet there, so here’s my update…

I flew from Libreville to Port Gentil on 13 February. On Valentine’s Day I woke up in Port Gentil and went to the fisherman’s wharf to take the boat to Fernan Vaz. It was a small open boat with only 8 other passengers. We crossed Nazareth Bay passing oil rigs and tugboats moving logs, and then moved into one of the many river channels that winds south to the Ogooue River delta. The vegetation there is mostly mangroves and palms with a few grassy areas along the river edges. The land is marshy so there only a few houses here and there, but no villages. We passed several other boats taking people and goods back and forth between Pt. Gentil and Ombooue, the biggest town in Fernan Vaz.

Pt. Gentil oil refineries

Logs floating in the bay as seen from the air as I flew into Pt. Gentil

The view across the water from this park was all logs as far as the eye could see
Despite the boat traffic passing through, it seems to me that manatees could easily live in these here, there are so many small channels winding back into the mangroves off the main rivers and other areas of flooded forests where the rivers have overflowed their banks. And there are almost no permanent human residents. As we zipped along we saw a water monitor lizard and also a large Nile crocodile! This was the first live Nile croc I’ve ever seen in Gabon, they’re usually very shy and not seen during the day. It jumped off a log into the water as our boat came around a corner, so I only saw its head, but judging by that (the head was about 2 feet long!) it was a pretty big one! Even the boat driver was excited, so I think it was a lucky sighting.

View of the Ogooue river channels taken on an earlier flight over the area... it was neat to see it from a boat
After a 3 hour boat trip we arrived at Fernan Vaz Lagoon. On the far shore I saw radio towers and some houses, gas flares and a couple helicopters. The oil business is much more obvious here than at other lagoons (although we also see lots of helicopters shuttling workers to oil fields at Sette Cama as well). After crossing the lagoon for another half hour we arrived at Olako Lodge, which is situated on the water in Ombooue, halfway down the lagoon.

Open gas flare on the lagoon

The centerpiece of the lodge is a beautiful restaurant that sits over the water.
The main lodge

The boat houseI settled into a room at the annex, which is about 200 meters down the road from the main lodge and had a large kitchen and living room.

It's an enormous lagoon!

2009-02-11T08:19:00.007-05:00

Gabon: Fernan Vaz

On Friday evening I'll take a short flight south from Libreville to Port Gentil, a large town on the coast of Gabon. Saturday morning I'll take a 4 hour boat ride south from Port Gentil and it will snake along inland river channels to Ombooue, a town in the center of Fernan Vaz Lagoon. (photo courtesy of Google Earth)

Fernan Vaz is Gabon's biggest lagoon at approximately 65km long. It also has the largest human population of any of Gabon's lagoons, it's the only lagoon in the country that has no protected area adjacent to it and many people tell me not to expect to find many manatees there. But I've also had other reports that lots of manatees are regularly seen in the rivers that connect to it, and a paper by Nishiwaki et al written in 1982 reports that in their interviews in Port Gentil they were told manatees were quite common in Fernan Vaz. I think reality will be somewhere in between...

I am staying at Olako Lodge for 2 weeks and will try to get on the water most days. This is the only lagoon in Gabon that I haven't been to yet, so I'm looking forward to seeing and learning about a new place. I'm not likely to have any internet while I'm there, but as always there will be stories and reports when I get back to Libreville at the end of the month.

2009-02-05T09:18:00.002-05:00

New article

Save the Manatee Club asked me to write a short article about my work in Africa, and it just came out on their website (click here to see it). They produced French manatee coloring/activity books and "Sauvon les Lamantins" stickers for me to use as educational tools in West Africa's French speaking countries, so I really appreciate their help!

2009-02-03T04:44:00.016-05:00

Senegal: Lac de Guiers and Tocc Tocc Reserve

After the manatee captures I went to northwestern Senegal, to Lac de Guiers. This huge lake is situated south of the Senegal River in an agricultural area near the town of Richard-Toll and it provides water for many cities in the country, including Dakar. It connects to the Senegal River by a manmade channel.

Several years ago Senegalese turtle biologist Tomas Diagne was surveying a cove on the northwestern side of the lake when he sighted manatees there. He was fascinated by them and this led him to start working to establish the area as a refuge. Manatees, turtles and many species of water birds will benefit from the protected area. At this point the paperwork to make it an official site has mostly made its way through government channels so it will be created soon. As far as I know, this will be the only protected area in all of West Africa created specifically for manatees. In the short term Tomas is hoping to get grants to do manatee surveys and to buy a small fiberglass boat to be used to conduct them. His long-term goal is to build an education center there which would be run by the local people. He envisions having kayaks and pirogues that people could rent to paddle out onto the lake and to bring school children out to learn about the ecosystem. Local fishermen would earn extra money by guiding trips. He has worked with the residents of the nearby fishing village of Toleu to understand their relationship to the lake and its animal inhabitants, so that the refuge will be a positive thing for them.

Our first day in the area, two enthusiastic guys from Toleu paddled us out to the proposed refuge. It is off the main lake and can be entered either by a small narrow channel or a wider one. I was immediately amazed by the number and size of the water lilies carpeting the surface of the water, absolutely spectacular. The appropriately named Lily-trotter (or African Jacana) birds were everywhere as well as many other species: Little Bee-eaters buzzed above us, cormorants dove for fish and African Pygmy Geese flew by. A pair of African Fish Eagles have a nest there and called loudly as we passed. Big schools of tiny fish swam by, some minnows, others juveniles of larger species like Tilapia, an important food fish for people here.

Looking back at Lac de Guiers through the small entrance to the reserve

It seemed like there were a million water lilies!

Manatee feeding sign- the area of pushed down grass in the center is caused by the manatees pushing into the grass as they eat. (photo: T. Diange)

African Jacana, Actophilornis africana Another striking water bird, the Spur-winged Lapwing (and an unidentified friend!)Juvenile African Fish Eagle I saw at least 3 species of water lily that are known manatee food plants (Nymphea lotus, Nymphea maculata and Nymphoides indica) as well as several species of grasses and some new plants I still need to identify. We found one area with fresh manatee feeding sign but the villagers say they mostly see manatees during the rainy season from July-September. I realized at that point that in the places I’d been along the Senegal River everyone told me they saw manatees during the rainy season, but no one seemed to know where they went during the dry season. So I continue to be hopeful that the tagged manatees are going to teach us.

Another thing I noticed (unfortunately) were many old nets left in the water. Most had algae or plants growing in them, big holes and some had caught fish. Tomas told me he plans to have a clean-up day as soon as the refuge is created to remove all the old, abandoned nets left behind.

We spent several days in the village and the people there were incredibly welcoming. Each morning I took long walks along the lake edge, enjoying the scenery and the wildlife. We also handed out "Sauvons les Lamantins" (Save the Manatees in French) stickers created for me by Save the Manatee Club in Florida, to help raise awareness about protecting the species in Africa. The day after we gave them out, I noticed them stuck on front doors and window shutters all around the village.

Tomas (right) hands out stickers

Some other images to give you a sense of the place: a view of the village through the front window of the house I stayed at.

A sailboat on Lac de Guiers
Despite the nearby lake, the land around it is very arid- composed of both salt marsh and savannah.On our way to and from Lac de Guiers, we passed through the beautiful old colonial town of St. Louis near the mouth of the Senegal River. Just south of town we passed the exact place where Michel Adanson collected the first West African manatee specimen by a European during his travels through Senegal from 1748-1753, and this holotype was later sent to Europe. Unfortunately he didn’t get credit for describing the species, that honor eventually fell to Link in 1795. But don’t feel too sorry for Adanson, there are numerous other species named for him, including the Baobab tree, of which all 6 species worldwide have the genus name Adansonia. The African baobab is Adansonia digitata.