It's Never Dull

Even though I'm not in the field right now (I postponed my return to Africa until later in the spring to get some much needed lab work done here in Gainesville, FL) the African manatee project still has alot of different things going on. I've spent quite alot of time over the past couple months working with partners on a proposal to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) that would hopefully increase regulation and protection of African manatees (more about this in my next post), as well as setting up collaborations with colleagues in 4 African countries, working on the usual grant applications and reports to keep the project funded (always my greatest challenge!), writing a proposal for a national manatee management plan for Senegal that was requested by their Ministry of the Environment, and shipping equipment to Africa.

Yesterday I sent off several barrels full of project t-shirts (that we give out during educational outreach programs), books and other field equipment by ship to Senegal. It will only take 3 weeks to get there, and this method will save the project thousands of dollars over shipping via the airlines.

In the lab I'm focusing on the stable isotope work these days, which is the analysis that's going to help me determine what types of food African manatees eat, to see if there are seasonal differences in their diet, and if their diet varies by age. Right now I'm processing reference samples- the food resources that manatees eat (which have either been confirmed by observing manatees eating in the wild or found in stomach samples from dead manatees, and even a few sources I'm not sure of, but that I suspect they might eat). As readers of the blog will remember, I collected many species of plants, fish and mollusks in Senegal last summer, so that's what I'm working with now.

First we sample different parts of each specimen... I've learned quite a bit about freshwater mussel anatomy! For plants I sample leaves, roots, stems, and seeds.

Samples go into these tiny glass vials, and once I have alot of them they are dried in a special oven for 24 hours.

After they're dried, all the samples are crushed into powder. Which turns out to be harder than it looks, because the samples are minute yet somehow the powder goes flying everywhere. One of the best methods I've learned so far is to chop the samples inside the vials using very fine scissors. After a couple hours your hands cramp up, but at least it preserves most of the sample!

Every single thing about this process is tiny and delicate, which is challenging for a fairly non-graceful person like myself! After the powder is crushed, a minute amount has to be placed in individual tin capsules. First the empty capsule is weighed on a very sensitive balance, then the powder is added with a miniture spatula. This is my biggest nightmare- a couple grains of powder too much and I'm over the limit, and getting excess powder back out means I always take too much. It literally took me 15 minutes to get the correct amount of powder in my first capsule. I started calculating 15 minutes x 200+ samples and almost had a nervous breakdown, but they tell me I'm getting better at it!

 Thankfully Michelle, an undergraduate in the lab, is a very patient teacher! Once the powder is in the capsule, the tin is gently closed up and smashed into a tiny ball. This is good for getting some aggression out after dealing with the balance!

After that each ball goes in a separate well in a mini tray. We also put in "standards" that have known values, to make sure the machine that reads the carbon and nitrogen content of each sample is working correctly. Once the tray is full, it goes off to another lab to have the sample values read. And then I'll hopefully get some interesting results!

I'm really enjoying learning the technique, as well as the great discussions I'm having with stable isotope researchers about all the possible ways we can study manatees with this tool. There has been very little of this kind of research done for manatees so far, and all of it was with the Florida manatee, so everything we're learning about African manatees is completely new... which makes it all worth it!

The Good and the Sad

It seems there's always a mix of good news with bad and sad for African wildlife, and the African manatee is no exception.

The sad news is that manatee hunting is still almost a daily event in Lambarene, Gabon, a town on the Ogouue River in the central interior of the country (and in many other places in Africa as well). Despite full legal protection under Gabonese law, specialist manatee hunters operate year round, and manatee meat is openly sold in local markets and restaurants. When I was in Lambarene in 2006, I was chased out of the market for trying to photograph crocodile and monkey carcasses for sale, but now I'm told tourists can photograph in the same market at will, which means that fear of wildlife law enforcement is nonexistent for the vendors. I've worked with a Gabonese colleague in the area off and on for a 5 years now and have tried to get him to collect samples of manatee meat so that I can do genetics analysis on this population to help me to determine the population size, their relatedness to other manatee populations in Gabon, and the impact of hunting in the region. However, the fellow has documented numbers of hunted manatees in some surrounding local villages, but hasn't collected any samples. I'm not sure why, but partially I think it's because he doesn't understand all the information genetics can tell us, and that it can lead to a direct effect on conservation actions.

So I was thrilled when some friends / colleagues recently moved to the area to start an ecotourism NGO. Not only are they interested in creating community-run ecotourism, but in studying the wildlife and ecosystem in this lush and remote area. Heather and Cyrille have started l’Organisation Écotouristique du Lac Oguemoué (OELO) which offers camping trips, lake paddling tours, forest walks, wildlife viewing and experiencing traditional Gabonese village culture (check out their Facebook page here). I hope to join them there next summer. But they've also been documenting bushmeat for sale in the Lambarene market and are ready to start helping to study this vulnerable population so that we can finally begin to understand the manatees in the Ogouue River and the impact of heavy hunting.

This is Cyrille & Heather when they received their African manatee t-shirts from my project at Christmas...

And this is what they're seeing in the market... manatee meat in a wheelbarrow

So while I'm horrified at the amount of manatee slaughter taking place in central Gabon, I'm very happy to have energetic colleagues joining our African manatee network!

In other sad news, I just heard from my colleague Kouame in Ivory Coast that their office was looted and completely destroyed during the political violence that occured in Abidjan last year, and all their equipment stolen, including the new field sampling gear I had just given them in 2010. Also lost were genetic samples they (and their former leader Akoi Kouadio who passed away) had been collecting for years for me to analyze. The good news is the violence has finally ended there, but the African manatee program (which was the longest continuously running research project for the species) has lost its funding and is over for now. Sometimes it feels like 1 step forward, 2 steps back...

IUCN Save Our Species

Happy 2013~ I hope everyone is having a wonderful new year so far! Last year ended very well for the African manatee project with the exciting news that we received a large grant from the IUCN Save Our Species Fund! The goals of this project are to identify important manatee habitat use sites within three specific areas in Senegal, Mali, and Nigeria, to implement manatee protected areas, provide training to build community-based sighting networks and alternative livelihoods, and to increase public awareness through educational programs. The project will continue to build capacity to enable informed grassroots conservation actions for the West African manatee, and will be used as a model for other future manatee conservation initiatives across Africa. Each of the three project components will be led by African researcher colleagues who have already successfully started manatee research in their respective countries...

Soumaila Berthe in San and Mopti, Mali will create manatee sanctuaries and begin a network for year round monitoring in collaboration with 5 villages along the Bani and Niger Rivers.

Boladji Abimbola in Lagos, Nigeria will train manatee hunters in aquaculture techniques and provide them with fish cages and stocked fish in order to develop alternative livelihoods to manatee hunting in coastal Nigeria.

Tomas Diagne and I will train staff hired from local villages for year round manatee monitoring, data collection, and enforcement of refuge rules at a protected area in Lac de Guiers, Senegal.

All project components will also conduct manatee educational programs for the surrounding communities and will receive equipment necessary to build longterm, sustainable projects. We are really excited to begin this work and will post updates here as it progresses.

Africa is Not a Country Photography Exhibit

For those of you in the Portsmouth, NH area, a photography exhibit entitled "Africa is not a Country" is up and running for the month of November. I have 4 photos in the show (including one of Victor, shown below), and proceeds from the sale of my photos and postcards will benefit my African manatee research. The exhibit is being held by the Seacoast African American Cultural Center and admission is free. To get directions or read more about the show, please click here.

Ancestral Manatee Fossil Found in Senegal

An interesting new scientific paper was just published reporting the find of a fossil vertebra that has been identified as a Prorastomid, the earliest ancestral family of Sirenians (which includes all manatees and dugongs). The fossil closely resembles the oldest known member of the Prorastomid family, Pezosiren portelli, which was a dog or pig-sized aquatic mammal that lived 50 million years ago. Unlike today's manatees and dugongs, Prorastomids had legs and could walk on land, although they also had adaptations to the aquatic environment such as nasal openings on top of their snout for breathing at the surface of the water, and dense, heavy rib bones that helped them submerge. It is believed they lived in shallow coastal ecosystems and fed on plants. One difference with the new fossil is that it is 40% larger than the previous Pezosiren fossils found in Jamacia, and it may be a different species.

This is an artist's drawing of what it is believed Pezosiren portelli looked like. Drawing courtesy of locolobo.org

This is a Pezosiren portelli skeleton that was found in Jamacia. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia, Photographer: thesupermat.

One thing that makes this new fossil find particularly exciting is that it was found in northern Senegal. Up to now all Prorastomid fossils have been found in the New World, although it was hypothesized that the family evolved in Africa (they are part of a group of animals known as Afrotheria, which also includes all the other the sirenians, elephants and hyraxes). So finally there's proof of the existence of Prorastomids in Africa. Dr. Daryl Domning, one of the paper's authors and the world authority on sirenian taxonomy, hypothesized in 2001 that Prorastomids originally evolved in the Old World and moved along ancient shorelines to reach the locale that is the present day Caribbean. 

Interestingly, after Prorastomids reached the Caribbean and Americas, and after millions of years, their ancestors evolved to become dugongs (there were once numerous dugong species in the Caribbean, but today there's only 1 species, found in the Pacific and Indian Oceans) and manatees (which are believed to have originated in an ancient inland sea in South America that today is the Amazon basin). So the manatees we see today in Africa did not evolve there directly since the time when their ancient ancestors the Prorastomids lived there. Instead, the manatee family (Trichechids) evolved in South America, then somehow moved back across the Atlantic Ocean, probably at least a few hundred thousand years ago, although the exact time frame is still unknown (and is one of the things I hope to estimate through my genetics research). So the manatees in Africa today have returned to the continent where their ancestors first evolved 50 million years ago. Pretty cool!  

The map below shows the way the continents and oceans looked during the Eocene Epoch, 50 million years ago, and the locations where the the Prorastomid fossils have been found. The vertebra on the right is the new discovery from Senegal. The phosphate mine where the fossil was found is not far from where I've been working at Lac de Guiers, so maybe I'll be able to visit it someday.

 

Images courtesy of: Hautier, L., R. Sarr, R. Tabuce, F. Lihoreau, S. Adnet, D. Domning, M. Samb, and P.M. Hameh. First Prorastomid Sirenian from Senegal (Western Africa) and the Old World Origin of Sea Cows. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 32(5):1218–1222, September 2012.

Thank You Jonathan!

After 4 long, hot months, Jonathan's time in Gabon has come to an end. This week he returned home to Puerto Rico to continue his Masters degree studies and his work with Antillean manatees. Jonathan achieved great success with Victor and his Gabonese caregivers during his second round of work there. We are thrilled to report that as of 2 weeks ago Victor has now been completely weaned from the bottle and is eating a diet of 100% plants! This is amazing work in only 4 months and although we expect Victor to lose a bit of weight during this transition, he's healthy and on track to be released in a few months. His Gabonese team now has the skills to continue feeding the plant species Victor eats, monitoring what he eats, and conducting periodic health assessments.

This photo shows Jonathan collecting the last blood samples before he left Gabon. This is the first time anyone has been able to collect and analyze baseline blood values for a West African manatee calf over time. This data, as well as other samples we are collecting, are giving us the first understanding of the growth and health parameters of this species. All photos below are courtesy of Jonathan Perez-Rivera.

Brice, one of Victor's Gabonese caretakers, has been working with Victor since the day he was rescued 2 years ago. He and the rest of the Gabonese team will now oversee all Victor's daily needs until he is released back to the wild this coming winter.

Victor munching plants at the edge of his enclosure. The team records not only which species of plants Victor eats, but which parts of the plant (leaves, roots, stems, etc.)

So Thank You for all your hard work Jonathan!!

News for the week

Jonathan reports that Victor now weighs 102 kg! He is eating 70% of his daily diet in plants and has been reduced to 1 bottle feeding a day, so we're thrilled that his transition to plants is going incredibly well! The trick is to keep Victor gaining weight while he's weaned from the high calorie milk formula onto a diet of plants, and so far Jonathan and the Gabonese team are succeeding with flying colors!! I hope to post more photos of our pudgy friend soon.

In other news, my colleague Aimee Sanders and I have started work on a new West African manatee educational video that will feature Victor as well as other footage of manatees, their habitat, and conservation efforts throughout the species range. We plan to produce it in 4 languages (English, French, Spanish and Portuguese) so that it can be used in all African countries where the West African manatee occurs. We hope to release it next spring, after Victor's release, so that we can include that event in the video. We are also creating an English version of our Save the African Manatee t-shirts to be used in educational outreach efforts in English speaking African countries.

I'm now back in Florida for a few months and starting my stable isotope analysis of the many reference plant, mollusk, and fish species I collected in Senegal this summer. It's very interesting for me to learn this new technique, which will identify what manatees are eating in different parts of their range. This in turn will help us understand important food sources and seasonal habitat needs for the species. I'll also continue my genetics analysis this Fall, and my colleague Katie Brill is already working to age the 18 new ear bones I brought back from Africa. So hopefully lots of exciting new information is coming soon!

2 species of freshwater catfish in the drying oven. Once fully desicated they will be ground into powder for stable isotope analysis.

The week ended very nicely when I received news from the Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund that my project has been awarded a grant for the 5th consecutive year in a row! I'm so grateful to have such loyal funders! Thank you Disney!!