Busy days on the Congo

I haven't had much time in front of the computer over the past few days- we've been out on the water all day everyday and I also got a nasty cold, so I've been doing nothing but working and sleeping with a few meals somewhere in between. We've made three trips up the Congo River looking for manatees and talking to people in villages along the way. On the first trip (last Friday) we stopped in at several villages I had visited last April. People are so friendly and remember us from last spring (of course they probably don't get many white visitors looking for manatees!), and tell us they still see manatees mostly every day. Unfortunately we haven’t seen any ourselves this time, but random people have gone by in canoes yelling “there were 2 here yesterday”, so I’m sure they’re around. Even though they may be prevalent, they’re still shy, and we also can’t get up here at dawn and dusk, which are usually the best times to see them. But you never know (and we did see that one manatee at mid-day in April), so we have spent quite a bit of time quietly drifting and waiting in different parts of the river in hopes of spotting one.

We have explored several new tributaries, and all are great habitat for manatees. The more I see of this area, the more I realize manatees here have an enormous network of mostly undisturbed mangrove and rainforest channels with relatively few villages and very few motorized boats, so it's no wonder that they have managed to survive so well in this area. We’ve also gotten 4 reports about hippos from different villages (spread far enough apart that they are not likely to be the same animal), and then on Sunday we were lucky enough to actually see 2 of them! Seeing hippos here feels very special because almost nothing is known about their numbers in this part of the world and few scientists (if any) are able to get here to study them.

This tributary was 10m deep! Overhanging vegetation provides both food and hiding places for manatees. We also saw a water monitor lizard and several cool species of birds along this river.

Hippos!

At our first village stop on Friday, a guy told us that the manatee hunter had died the previous week. I was surprised, because he had seemed in perfect health in April, but I later learned that he died from an infection in his leg. I had conflicting emotions about this news- he was an interesting man and had a wealth of knowledge about manatees in this area, their behavior, movement patterns, etc., but of course he was also killing several a week, so I was also somewhat relieved that he won't be able to kill any more. He does have 2 sons though, and Joao speculated that they may want to take over the family business.

Yesterday we went to the hunter’s village, N’Tutu. There was only one man there when we arrived, and he showed us the hunter’s hut, his cooking area and his harpoons. Behind the cooking area, which backed up into the mangroves, we found manatee bones scattered everywhere! Tim, Warren (staff biologist here, a great South African guy I first met at a sea turtle conference several years ago) and I searched around and ended up collecting 101 bones! Some are old and weathered, but others were very fresh. This will hopefully be a treasure trove of genetics information. Of course the guy who was showing us around the village thought we were completely crazy to want to pick up the trash bones. We asked about the manatee hunter’s sons, and he told us that neither are interested in becoming manatee hunters; one has gone down river to Soyo (the biggest town here) to look for a better job, and the other lives in a nearby village but has other work. This is a huge relief to me since Mr. Domingo was the only hunter in this whole area stretching at least 40km.

Searching the mangroves for bones
Warren starts piling bones on the beach

The manatee hunter's cooking hut

We collected 101 bones and 1 tissue sample from N'Tutu, which represent a minimum of 13 individual manatees, but the number could be alot higher than that. It makes me excited to do the genetics work! We collected 12 lower jaws, 7 upper jaws, 43 ribs, 2 sterums, 5 vertebrae, 2 partial scapulas and numerous other skull bones. I'm fairly certain this is the largest number of West African manatee bones ever collected for genetics.

Angola Trip #2, first field day

Tim arrived here in Angola yesterday and we've finalized our workplan for the next couple weeks. This takes a bit of effort coordinating boats, drivers and translators (when we visit villages) with staff from Angola LNG. Our liason on the base this time is a great guy named Stuart, a Scotsman with a wonderful sense of humor who is incredibly helpful and even-keeled, and a joy to work with. Also, since this is my second trip, there are familiar faces and it's easier to get back into the routine. It's the end of the dry season here so everything is very dusty, the weather is mostly cloudy but cool (70's during the day which is refreshing after the Florida humidity).

This morning we went out to a wide channel near the base where several fishermen reported frequently seeing manatees feeding at low tide (and often at night, but we don't boat here at night for safety reasons). The tide was still going out when we arrived at 7:00am and I had been told about an embankment to sit up on to watch over the small lagoon area, so we sat and watched for over an hour. At one point Tim saw a head pop up, but it could've been a turtle. Lots of fish rolled at the surface, but since no manatees seemed to be there, we took the boat back out and sampled the area for aquatic plants. Our first 2 scoops with a sediment sampler brought up small freshwater plants with crinkly leaves similar to ones I've also found in Gabon except with browner leaves, but I'll need to do alittle further research to determine the species. Other areas of the channel yielded no plants, which isn't surprising because the water is murky and often too deep for sunlight to penetrate. So at least we know the place where manatees have been reported has food available.

Calm morning on Pululu Channel

Tim brings up the sediment sampler

Finding plants in the mud!

In the afternoon we went back out to 3 villages along the peninsula at the mouth of the Congo River to conduct interviews about manatees and dolphins. Joao, our fantastic translator, came along and was invaluable as always. Manatees don't frequent this area much anymore because they have mostly been hunted out, but they are seen occasionally and several people have seen (and in one case, eaten) them in the past two months. There are no hunters on the peninsula anymore, but if a manatee gets caught in a fishing net, it's too much meat for people here to pass up. No one had any bones or other remains, although they did have meat/bones from dolphins in two villages, so Tim was able to collect his first genetic samples. Dolphins are sighted often in this area at this time of year (dry season) so we will be doing a couple surveys off the coast later this week to try to get sightings of both dolphins and whales.

A resident of the village of Bocolo shows Tim dolphin meat

In Transit (written on Tuesday somewhere over the Atlantic)

Now that I’ve finally settled into my comfortable seat on the 15 hour flight from Houston to Luanda, Angola I actually have time to really start thinking about returning to Africa. Of course I have been planning logistics for the past month or so, but then I took a much-needed relaxing vacation in the Pacific northwest with my family, and only returned to FL for 2 1/2 days before leaving for Angola. I’ve been so busy thinking about everything I needed to bring, the work plan for manatee surveys, various travel logistics, etc., that I hadn’t had time to consider the excitement of returning to Africa until now. And what a great feeling it is. I have spent most of the past 3 months at my computer working on grant applications to raise funds to continue and expand manatee research, stakeholder training and conservation efforts for Gabon, and have been fortunate to receive three grants so far, as well as some very nice individual donations, all of which brings me 2/3 of the way to my budget goal. So hard work is paying off and I am looking so forward to being back there for at least 4 months this year which will give me more time in-country to get work done. Although there certainly are challenges for manatee conservation in Gabon, there is also more hope for the species there than in many other parts of West Africa, and it feels good to be building momentum for a long-term effort there. There is such wonderful enthusiasm from the people I work with as well. So stay tuned for field notes from Gabon.

But first, in the next few weeks I’ll do my second round of manatee surveys in northern Angola. Then I’ll go to Gabon for meetings the Wildlife Conservation Society is holding to hopefully unite research, training and fundraising efforts for marine species in Gabon’s coastal ecosystems so that we can all work more effectively together there.

Of Mangroves and Manatees

Thanks to Tom Reinert for passing on a well-written news article discussing the importance of mangroves, which also mentions their importance to West African manatees. Infact, the very first West African manatee I ever saw was eating red mangrove when we spotted it. I'm daydreaming about returning to Gabon's spectacular mangrove ecosystems in just a couple months!

Oil Spill News from Gabon

Below I've pasted an article posted on Bloomberg.com. The lagoon is actually named Fernan Vaz (also known as N'komi) and is the only lagoon in Gabon that is not part of a national park or protected area (and unfortunately it's also the only lagoon I haven't surveyed for manatees yet, although I hope to get there next Fall). The spill occurred at the southern end of the lagoon, at almost the furthest point from it's outlet to the ocean (which is obviously good for the ocean, but bad for the lagoon and its wildlife). There is little information so far on the effects of the spill.

Perenco Pipeline Burst May Have Caused Gabonese Oil Spill
By Clare Spencer

May 27 (Bloomberg) -- A pipeline operated by Perenco SA, a closely held French oil company, may have burst and caused an oil spill in a lagoon off the coast of Gabon, said Bas Huijbregts, a technical adviser to the World Wildlife Fund.

The spill occurred in the Ferna Naz lagoon near Omboue, 228 kilometers (142 miles) south of the capital, Libreville, on May 12, Huijbregts said in an interview today in the city. While the pipeline has subsequently been repaired, residents have been told not to drink the water, according to the Web site of Publish What You Pay, a Gabonese non-governmental organization.

No one was available for comment when Perenco's office in Libreville was contacted, said Magali Bechade, a personal assistant at the company.

Perenco pumps 50,000 barrels of oil a day in Gabon, according to its Web site. Gabon is sub-Saharan Africa's fifth-biggest oil producer and produced 232,000 barrels a day in 2006, according to the BP Statistical Review. Nigeria is the continent's biggest crude producer.

Map for reference (dark green areas are national parks):

And Another!
Today Disney Conservation Fund joins the list of Gabon manatee project funders with a new grant. I couldn't be happier about the momentum this work is gaining. I'm looking forward to giving a talk about African manatee work at Disney's Living Seas in July.

I still have a way to go to reach my ambitious budget goal that will allow me to GPS tag West African manatees for the first time, but every piece certainly helps!!

A New Funder for Gabon!

Great news today, the SeaWorld Busch Gardens Conservation Fund has just notified me that they have awarded me a grant for my Gabon manatee research! This is a new funder for this project and it's the first funding I've received this year for the next round of work in Gabon. So I'm thrilled!! I am still waiting to hear about 7 other applications, but we're off to a good start.