Just say no to trash!

Nico and Aurora attend International Beach Clean up day for the Namibian Dolphin Project.

'Just say no to trash!': This is the first message coming from the Ocean Week that has started last Saturday. In fact, in spite of the cold and rainy morning, more than 100 Walvis Bay residents attended the Beach Cleaning Day, which was organised by the NACOMA project as the first event of the Ocean Week. In addition, there were representatives from the Army, press, the Ministry of Fishery, conservation projects (NDP, CETN) and lots of passionate school kids from elementary to high schools attending the event. It is particularly to the school childred that the message of 'Just say to no to Trash' is directed.

Under the banner of this message, Mrs. Sue Roux (CETN – Coastal Environment Trust of Namibia) welcomed all the participants in a crowded chamber at the Municipality and presented some of the terrible effects of pollution worldwide; yellow rivers, plastic seas and marine animals wrapped in nets or intoxicated by oil were some of the striking images shown. After the introductions, groups of children and adults spent their morning together cleaning the coastline of the town: from the pump station in the south to Langstrand in the north.

Each group was provided with gloves and recycling bags to sort glass, plastic, metal and paper. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) kilos and kilos of trash were collected: nets, clothes, cans, glass and plastic bottles, thousands of metal lids, cigarette' packs, tires, buoys, newspapers, toys, car windows, bricks, wires and much more were found along Walvis Bay beaches and lagoons. The very same areas used by jackals, flamingos and herons! Besides the amount of litter removed from the shores, one the most important goals of this event was to make as many people as possible aware that Namibian beaches are unfortunately not only made of sand and that trash has an high impact on everybody's life and on our Earth. Hopefully the kids who joined the event learnt that each one of us is responsible for his own trash, and that disposing of it in the proper way does make the difference... and in doing so, it won't be necessary to wake up early on Saturdays to clean beaches anymore!

A big thanks to the NACOMA project for organising this day as part of a global initiative.

Summary of our 2012 winter season in Walvis Bay

First off - a quick nod to Yamaha South Africa - who gave us a great deal on a set of 60HP four strokes this year making them (just) affordable to the project.  These new engines have allowed us to have more and longer sea days, use about 30% less fuel and range much further from home with great confidence. A good investment all round I'd say.

From 00:00 hours on the engines on 08 March 2012 to 309:00 hours today (06 Sept 2012)! All that with not a moments trouble (except for that time we kinked a fuel pipe, but that was entirely my fault, so lets not talk about that).  That's a lot of time on the water - so a big thanks to Yamaha SA for the help.

So - I'm not even going to summarise what we did in Luderitz this year just the 2 months here in Walvis Bay (perhaps next week).  This is the project's FIFTH winter here in Walvis and we have a great time series of data on Heaviside's and bottlenose dolphins and a growing body of data on humpback whales. Turning these thousands of photos, GPS points and pithy observations into scientific papers and hopefully some popular articles will be the focus of our next few months.

So,
July 2012 - 
Team: Simon, Tess, Ryan Reisinger, Meagan Gary, Julie Coffey, Alex Sasso, Jeremy Day and Georgios Cambanis

- 19 sea days
- 16 with Heaviside's
- 9 with bottlenose
- 9 with humpback whales (a record in my experience here)
- 109:06 hours on the water (at an average of 05:44 per day)
- 966.2 km at sea.
~8600 photos taken!
Strandings: 1 dessicated Heaviside only

August 2012:
Team: Simon, Tess, Nico Tonachella, Aurora Nastasi, Meagan Gary, Julie Coffey, Sam Warnock, Alice Affatati and Sabrina Ergun

- 18 sea days (lots of bad weather unfortunately, so some short days but some much longer ones to compensate)
- 15 with Heaviside's
- 11 with bottlenose
- 5 with humpback whales
- 83:57 hours on the water (at an average of 05:48)
- 986.8km at sea.
~8400 photos taken.
Strandings: none (strangely)

So - remarkably similar months all round!

Here is where we went in the last two months, including our trip to Sandwich Harbour:
Legend:
Each dot is recorded 1 min apart and so they represent what the boat was doing at any time
Yellow - Searching
Dark blue - Humpback whales
Bright blue - Heaviside's dolphins
Red - Bottlenose dolphins

Even at this level, habitat partitioning between the species is rather obvious.

You may notice that according to the marine navigation chart and Garmin chart plotter - our boat is in fact a hover craft.  Amazing how much the coastline changes down there as the sand dunes are eroded by the ocean.

A great big thank you for Tess and myself to Ryan, Nico and Aurora for helping keep things together! and especially a huge thank you to all the Oceans Research Interns for coming all the way to Namibia to help us out!

Friendly whales

By Alex Sasso. Oceans Intern July 2012.

Tuesday was my best trip out on the boat yet and I think it will be very hard to top. It was a beautiful warm morning and immediately after launching we came upon a large group of bottlenose dolphins and worked with them for photo-ID and acoustics for about an hour. Then we made our way out to the point and got a report of humpback whales out at sea. We went to go check it out and found two humpback whales with a few tour boats. The whales seemed very relaxed and were moving slow and gracefully through the area. It was actually very simple to keep track of them because they were only traveling at about 2 knots and stayed on the same course. I kept track of their breathing rate so we knew about every 4-5 minutes they would be resurfacing. We got great photo ID pictures of their dorsal fins (“Flatty” and “Hook” were how we distinguished the two animals) and one decent shot of a fluke. We stayed with the whales for a while and they soon became curious about our boat and the surrounding tour boats. They would surface in front of the tour boats repeatedly, as if to check them out and have their picture taken by the tourists. They even spy hopped a few times, which was really cool. You could see all the barnacles surrounding their mouth. Then they came to visit our boat. They swam directly in front of us. We could see them just under the water and they surfaced only 1-2 meters from our boat. It was incredible and probably only lasted about 20 seconds, but it is 20 seconds of my life I will never forget. To have the opportunity to see such graceful and giant creatures, whom I’ve loved and dreamed of studying my entire life swim within a few arm lengths from me was an experience of a lifetime. 

Once the tour boats left, we stayed with the whales to collect biopsy samples. Simon did the shooting with the biopsy crossbow, while wearing a GoPro on his head (kind of like a nerdy Rambo, still very cool though).), and we got great samples from both animals. The animals had little to no reaction to the biopsy dart, which we were happy about because they were such friendly whales and we really didn’t want to make them upset. After our work was done, I drove the boat home for the first time. It was simple because the water was calm, thankfully! Overall the day was a phenomenal experience and one I hope all future interns with have the opportunity to experience as well. 

 

SITTING THERE WITH OUR ENGINES OFF, THE WHALES CRUISED RIGHT PAST US TO CHECK US OUT

ALLOWING TO TAKE NICE ID SHOTS OF THEIR DORSAL FINS

By Julie Coffey, Oceans Intern July & Aug 2012.

This week in Walvis Bay has been full of  unique and exciting encounters at sea. I got my first good look at a Mola mola (sunfish) on Tuesday. You can spot one by its fin lifting out of the water- this one  was about a meter wide and we got some great pictures as he floated just under the surface, they're remarkably boat friendly!

In the office we've been working on photo identification, acoustics analysis, and entering new data. The acoustics data is quite interesting to explore, as you can hear the various whistles and clicks of the dolphins in addition to seeing the representation of sounds well beyond the range of human hearing. Today we were presented with a misty morning on the Namibian coast, but decided to head out despite the lower visibility. We encountered some Heaviside's dolphins by the point but were rewarded further by a humpback whale sighting. After hanging back so the tour boats could enjoy, we followed along parallel to the two adults. To determine the most probable spot of the next surfacing, we timed the intervals of their blows as they travelled. It was truly amazing to be so close to such giant, beautiful creatures! I'd only ever seen whales from a commercial whale watching boat before, but being in such close proximity on Nanuuq was a different experience entirely! I imagine that the thrill I felt as we crested swells in pursuit of the whales must have been similar to what the early whalers experienced. Sentimentality aside, Simon managed to get a good shot at one of the whales so we got our first tissue sample of the day. At some point we managed to swap whales and found ourselves a new individual, but after getting a few photos of him, he headed North along his migratory path and we were back with our original duo. We got another tissue sample from the second whale and then called it a day. 

Breaching humpback whales

By Meagan Gary, Oceans Intern July and August 2012.

This past week has been an exciting week for everyone a part of the Namibian Dolphin Project. On Tuesday, we were on our way to Sandwich Harbour (60km south of Walvis by boat), to set up a C-Pod (a device that will record data about the echolocation clicks for months at a time) to record bottlenose dolphin presence down there.  Unfortunately, due to poor weather conditions we aborted after only heading about 10km down the coast as we need really good weather to make it that far and back safely. However, this ended up being a good decision on many levels. 

While we were photographing a very boat-friendly group of Heaviside’s dolphins, a humpback whale was spotted breaching on the horizon. Humpback whale data is important to the Namibian Dolphin Project because the population structure of the humpback whales seen in Namibia isn’t fully understood. The whales that pass by Walvis Bay are on their way north, probably to Gabon, but possibly to a breeding area slightly further south. This has been a very good year for humpback whale sightings in Namibia, but because there are usually only one or two a day, and it can take over an hour to get the data we need (biopsy for a skin sample and photo ID images), each and every whale counts. The humpbacks that pass by Namibia tend not to breach as often as the humpback whales in other parts of the world. When whales breach they can lose bits of skin which can be collected and used for genetics, saving us from having to biopsy the whale. As we approached we saw two humpback whales flipper slapping and breaching.  It was spectacular to see from the perspective of our 6m long boat, small by comparison. By the end of the encounter we had over a hundred photos for photo ID and two biopsy samples. It was a great last day for the interns that stayed only for July. The next couple days were filled with training for the August intern teaching them how to take advantage of some of these unexpected opportunities to collect data. 

By Alex Sasso, interning with us for July from Eckerd College in Florida, USA - a few words about their trip to Sossusvlei:

The last five days have been very adventurous and exciting for us interns here at the Namibian Dolphin Project. Over the weekend the six of us traveled to Sossusvlei, which is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Namibia. Basically it is a valley surrounded by extremely large red dunes and when there are heavy rains the valley will fill with water, but rain is unusual so it’s very special when there is actually rain in the valley or “vlei”. It was an absolutely breath taking and amazing sight and I encourage anyone to make the trip.

We rented a car, well a 10 passenger van to be exact (we called it “The Beast”) and made the long 6 hour journey on washboard dirt roads. It was very cool to watch the Namibian landscape change as we left Walvis Bay. The scenery changed from desert to grassland and some mountains, to mountains, to grasslands with lots of mountains. We also saw some awesome African wildlife along the road such as Springboks, Oryx and Ostriches, seriously who needs to pay to go on a safari? About 5 hours into the trip we arrived in Solitaire, which is the only place to get gas and any type of food. There is a bakery next to the gas station owned by a man named “Moose” and he makes delicious pastries and bread! Definitely get the apple pie or blueberry crumble! When we arrived at Sossusvlei we got a campsite at Sesriem. That day we walked through this canyon that has some great rocks and small ledges to climb! That night we made a fire and cooked ourselves dinner and attempted to make s’mores (good marshmallows and graham crackers are not easily found in Africa). Sleeping in the tents was an experience as the wind was extremely strong all night and sand covered us in our sleep. Then in the morning on our way out of our campsite to go into the Sossusvlei park our van got stuck in the sand (hmm renting a 4x4 probably would have been a better idea). After about an hour and a half of waiting to get pulled out of the sand, we were free and on our way to finally see the Sossusvlei and it was definitely worth all the trouble.

When we returned back to Walvis Bay we were welcomed back to warm weather thanks to the east wind! Finally we could break out the shorts and t-shirts instead of the usual layers of sweaters, gloves and hats! 

George Cambanis is interning with our project for the month of July.  He's from Greece and currently studying in Chicago, USA.

1 week in Walvis Bay…

The life we have been experiencing during the past week is an academic but also a social life, its novel even though we are all gradually becoming habituated with our daily lives and most importantly entertaining while everyone is at the same time serious about the project.  Simon and Tess divided us-newcomers into two subgroups, composed of three interns each. Our daily schedule dictates that we execute our scientific research early in the morning and once we have gathered our facts, we then “digitalize” them, that is, upload them into the computers used by the Namibian Dolphin Project in our comfy office in the Flamingo Cottages. Usually, one of the teams will research offshore in its quest for dolphin species and other marine mammals while the other team will examine different coastal areas of Namibia.

Our research is centered on dolphins. We therefore, photograph all of our “encounters” and try to photographically identify them once back in the office. We also examine their habitat and record everything we deem valuable, ranging from an unusually high concentration of jellyfish which can be the outcome of a potentially underlying important cause to the number of tour-boats we come across. Spending time with bottlenoses and Heaviside’s dolphins we come to realize and appreciate the uniqueness of every animal.

To a further extent, every day adds to an emerging familiarity with the environment of Namibia itself. Looking for stranded animals, observing the magnificent kingdom of birds that fills the sky and using our hydrophone to listen to the “signature whistles” of dolphins we are gradually coming to terms with the harmony and magnificence of Namibian’s wildlife.

All in all, what has been offered to us is a fulfilling “life-activity”. Whether it is the observation of an anatomical operation of petrels or the knowledge that the project results in an accumulation of novel scientific data, we fill satiated, engaged and excited. More to come. Best, George Cambanis.