Fieldwork in November

by Ruth H. Leeney

It has been almost a year since I have been in Namibia, so I had some catching up to do. After a few weeks of office work, emailing, meetings and observations in Wavis Bay, I headed south to fulfil my usual duties with the acoustic monitoring gear deployed there. The project has been carrying out acoustic monitoring for odontocetes at two sites in the coastal waters of Lüderitz for a year and a half now, and I’m looking forward to seeing what patterns in habitat use start to emerge from the data. Having arrived I spent the afternoon and evening downloading data from the two C-PODs and their associated temperature loggers, and resetting the instruments for redeployment.
Early on the following morning, I boarded the RV !Anichab to redeploy both C-PODs and allow the time series of acoustic data to continue. I had much help from the crew with sorting out the moorings and getting the heavy anchors over the side as we deployed each mooring. I’m very grateful to Jean-Paul Roux for organizing this trip on the Ministry of Fisheries’ research vessel.

by Stefanie Rowland, UK. Oceans research Intern August 2010:

When I got off the plane seemingly in the middle of the desert I never dreamed that this barren land would supply some of the best experiences and memories of my life in the space of a few short weeks. On my first full day in Walvis Bay we were blessed with gorgeous weather, so headed out on the boat. The early start was a bit of a shock, but was definitely worth it, when in the space of one morning we had two species of dolphin coming up to us and bow riding! To cap it all off two humpback whales had been spotted – a mother and calf! They surfaced so close to us that I could feel the spray from their blow hole! I thought that things couldn’t possibly get better than that, but I was oh so wrong: in the space of two weeks I’ve travelled north to a national park, where we ventured into the desert to play on sand dunes; seen amazing scenery ranging from ocean to desert to scrub land; been up close to a dead humpback whale (the smell wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be!); had some practise at driving the boat; had a go at some photography; travelled south for two days (with a stopover in the capital); seen loads of wildlife including springbok, orix, seals and a family of warthogs! It’s not all glamour though, some days can be cold on the boats and you can’t be squeamish about getting covered in all sorts, from seawater to barnacle juice, but it has most definitely been worth it, I’ve learnt so much from being here and had a lot of laughs in the process.

At the entrance to the Skeleton Coast National Park:

Team photo at the Ugab River mouth in the Park

John Paterson (the former head ranger at SKNP and now Albatross Task Force), took us up to a place called Oasis on the edge of the dune field...stunning.

Some of the cetacean skulls we were measuring and collating at the little Museum at Mowe Bay

Passing time during another puncture on the way back south from the park

Photographing dolphins in Luderitz -

One of our own

For the first time in my career as a marine mammal biologist, I saw one of my study animals dead. I've seen loads of dead whales and dolphins since I started along this path and I've identified lots of whales and dolphins photographically. But Walvis Bay is the first project I've worked on long enough, that I've got to see and get to know some of the animals as 'individuals'. We have regular of Heaviside's we know but it's the bottlenose population here (~80-100 animals) that become like old friends after a while. The majority of them are easily identifiable and I've had a particular fondness for the mothers in our population, which are frequently seen together, so it was a little sad finding one of them dead on the beach.

Animal T-017 was first seen by us in June 2008 with a small calf and on several other occasions during out pilot study.

She wasn't seen at sea during the summer field season of 2009 but was one of the 19 animals which stranded in the lagoon in March, were tagged with seal flipper tags and rescued. She was actually tagged twice on that day, the first time was unsuccessful and left a partial hole, the second time went all the way through. Since this time she has hardly been seen at all in the bay area.

She was seen in the winter field season (Aug 2009) with her tag still in her fin, not seen in the summer of 2010 and only once in the current winter season.

Then, a dolphin was reported dead on the beach north of Swakopmund a few weeks ago and when we went to investigate, it turned out to be one of 'our' bottlenose dolphins, T-017.

She was fairly decomposed, and had a few shark bites along her belly. It's impossible to tell if these occurred before or after death, but judging from their size are probably from a bronze whaler shark which are common along this coast.

So..we've lost a mother from this population. We kept the skull and from the teeth, it may be possible to age her one day.

Just wanted to add a little thank you to our friends atWe managed to break the plug pins on the sponsored 420S Chart plotter a little while ago, and also had a older hand held GPS unit that was giving us some trouble.

Jason, Mike, Fraser and the crew at Garmin in Cape Town speedily sorted them out for us and everything is in 100% working order - thanks guys!! We'd be lost without you .

Days off in Namibia

By Lucille Chapuis - Oceans Research Intern July 2010.

16/07/10

Etosha National Park… a small taste of Eden

Although we enjoy greatly the aquatic fauna of Walvis Bay, we were quite happy when Simon accepted to let us have 3 days off in a row, which allowed us to visit the one of the world’s greatest wildlife reserves: Etosha National Park, 20 000 sq km of inland protected habitats, around the Etosha Pan, a huge flat and saline desert that is transformed in a lagoon during the rainy season. Having spent a night in a camp site near the park, we leave on an early morning and enjoy the sunrise entering the gate. Only a few minutes later, giraffes, zebras and springboks are already shining in our eyes… The time flows as we explore the bush and grasslands and discover their inhabitants: grass eaters like blue wildebeests, impalas, oryx, steenboks, jackals and ostriches are very abundant. The predators and the bigger ones are of course more difficult to spot. We face up to the challenge and with our budding biologists nose, we find a horde of 40 elephants having a communal bath in a waterhole, a leopard chilling under a bush, one lioness and her three cubs sipping quietly some water from a pond, as well as an immense and solitary elephant crossing the road nonchalantly. We rushed through the exit door under a beautiful “Etoshan” sunset, in high spirits and satiated. We drive back to Walvis Bay on the next day, looking forward to meet our sea-friends again. This week-end was just a part of our epic journey that we interns have been undertaking here for more than three weeks, experiencing an untouched, although elusive, “wild” wilderness.

Lucille

Stranding season continues..

It seems to be a season of many strandings. On Wednesday this week a humpback whale was reported to us by Neels Dreyer to be stuck in shallows of the harbour in front of the fishing factories. The NDP team and John Paterson (Albatross Task Force) responded promptly and got on site to find several divers from Walvis Bay diving already in the water trying to guide the animal out to sea. After a little discussion with the TunaCor security officers to assure them we were there on legit business, John, Gwen Penry and I got our wetsuits on hopped in the water with the divers to help with the rescue attempt.

The whale was clearly unwell, covered in cyamids (whale lice), had a broken dorsal fin (probably from hitting into the jetty, it definitely wasn't a propeller cut) and was clearly disoriented, swimming at an angle, holding its head up and only going in circles. With much pushing we occasionally got the animal out of the shallows but it kept turning back to come lie on its belly. We attempted to the tow/guide the whale out of the shallows with help from the Walvis Bay diving boat, but although it got out a little way, it again came back.

The WBD boat had to leave but we got in two more boats from Mola Mola Tours and Henning DuPlessis (a local oyster farmer). These larger boats were more successful at pulling the whale further out of the jetty area, and eventually managed to get it past the moored ships. With some great driving by Rudi Hass and Eddie of Mola Mola and Henning - they managed to keep the whale from turning back to the shallows and guided her out in the deeper central bay area (last photo).

Once in the deeper water the whale paused to reoriented it self and seemed to wake up and head off strongly northwards. We were all hopeful that it was going to make it but unfortunately, on Thursday, the whale was reported re-stranded on the west side of the bay near the pump station.

The decision was taken at this point to let nature take it's course. Strandings are sad, but natural events and you can only perform so many rescue attempts (which are quite stressful for the whale) before admitting defeat.

I've put in some photos below, most taken by Lucille Chapuis, (one of our July interns) of the rescue operation in the harbour.

A big thankyou to Walvis Bay Diving, Mola Mola tours, Henning du Plessis and Tunacor for their help.

By Caroline Budden.

Hello! My name is Caroline and I am currently an intern at the Namibia Dolphin Project. I arrived here on the 1^st of July from the UK. The view as I flew from Johannesburg to Walvis Baywas beautiful and consisted of miles of desert as far as the eye could see. I was met at the airport by Simon and after meeting the other interns and staff, I was soon feeling settled in and started learning how to grade dolphin photographs. This is important as only high quality photos are used to identify individual dolphins. The next day, on land survey duty, I caught a glimpse of my first bottlenose dolphin, which surfaced about 10m from shore. After teasing us with two short appearances, it then promptly disappeared. On my next land survey a few days later, we came across a whole group of bottlenose dolphins close to shore. We watched them wave riding, took as many photographs as we could and spent the next few hours tracking them from the beach to monitor their social interactions and general behaviour. This proved to be more difficult than it sounds - you don’t realize just how fast they can swim unless you are running alongside, trying to keep up with them!

On our day off, myself and the other interns went kayaking with wild seals at Pelican Point. The seals were adorable and were very intrigued by us and our brightly coloured kayaks. They were constantly swimming over to take a closer look and there were even a few attempts to steal our paddles! We saw a number of jackals as we drove through the desert and were amazed to witness a stand-off between a jackal and a fully grown seal. The jackal won the fish prize in the end but the seal didn’t give up easily!

While out on the research boat we encountered a whole group of Heaviside dolphins, inccluding two mothers with calves. I will never forget the sight of a baby calf swimming alongside the boat right beside me. However, the highlight of my first week here has to be the sight of a humpback whale surfacing about 5m away from the back of our boat. The noise of it blowing out as it surfaced made everyone on board jump with shock, especially as we were all expecting it to come up about 500m away in a completely different direction. I have had so many incredible experiences here in just a week and I am eagerly looking forward to the next few weeks!