Angola Trip #2 Wrap-upYesterday I left Soyo and flew to Luanda, Angola’s capital. Tomorrow I’ll fly to Gabon via Johannesburg, S. Africa (there are no direct connections between Angola & Gabon, so it’ll take a few days to get there, par for the course in...Read More

Outrageous Whale Day!Another component of the whale work here is the deployment and recovery of acoustic recording devices (called Marine Autonomous Recording Units or MARUs, developed by Cornell University Ornithology Lab, Bioacoustics Research Program) to record whale song. Actually they continuously record everything 24/7 while...Read More

Last Peninsula trip, for nowOn Thursday afternoon Joao and I boated back over to the Sereia peninsula to do a few more interviews at villages. We took along Mendez and Gisela, the Angolan students, and showed them the habitat around Pululu Channel (which is more...Read More

The Bone CollectorsThe day after our incredible find and collection of manatee bones at N’Tutu, Warren and I documented and sampled each one back at base. We were assisted by Gisela, an Angolan biology student who, along with a recent graduate named Mendez, came to...Read More

Whale DaysManatee work in Angola is part of a larger project here that also includes cetacean and sea turtle research. On this trip Tim and our other collaborator Sal (who arrived last Tuesday) are doing cetacean work, and since most of my background with whales...Read More

More images from Congo River surveysWhile waiting quietly for manatees or stopping in at villages to talk to people about them, we have plenty of time to see lots of other interesting things on the river...Read More

Busy days on the CongoI haven't had much time in front of the computer over the past few days- we've been out on the water all day everyday and I also got a nasty cold, so I've been doing nothing but working and sleeping with...Read More

Angola Trip #2, first field dayTim arrived here in Angola yesterday and we've finalized our workplan for the next couple weeks. This takes a bit of effort coordinating boats, drivers and translators (when we visit villages) with staff from Angola LNG. Our liason on the...Read More

In Transit (written on Tuesday somewhere over the Atlantic)Now that I’ve finally settled into my comfortable seat on the 15 hour flight from Houston to Luanda, Angola I actually have time to really start thinking about returning to Africa. Of course I have been planning...Read More

Of Mangroves and ManateesThanks to Tom Reinert for passing on a well-written news article discussing the importance of mangroves, which also mentions their importance to West African manatees. Infact, the very first West African manatee I ever saw was eating red mangrove when we spotted...Read More