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 […]
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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,
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
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
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
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
Senegal Manatee Rescue Video Click here: Navel Rescue video This video is from the rescues we did in January 2009 at Navel in eastern Senegal but the video was only posted online a few months ago. Better late than never! There were many agencies involved, as listed in the description. I provided the satellite tags and tagging expertise to this project. These rescues continue on
Mali wrap-up (for now) Mali is a very important place to study the West African manatee because this population is isolated thousands of miles inland from their coastal relatives. As the photo above shows (courtesy of Google Earth), the inland Niger delta is a huge wetland that nourishes an otherwise extremely arid desert region. Manatees here were naturally isolated once they colonized this area however
New project webpage The Save Our Seas Foundation, one of my funders, has created a new website for my African manatee work… check it out at http://saveourseas.com/projects/manatees_ga. Right now it’s in somewhat of a first draft form because we’re waiting to add photos of West African manatees (coming soon I hope!), there will be a link to this blog, and hopefully other info in the