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!

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.

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!

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.

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!

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

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!