A Few Pictures of Tenerife The Magma conference center where the first 2 days of presentations (all on small cetaceans) took place. View of Playa des Americas, Tenerife… unbelievable rampant development that has pretty much all happened in the past 40 years Short-finned Pilot Whales The Jardin Tropical Hotel where the rest of the meetings were held.
Manatees in the Canary Islands?Actually, no. Tim and I came here to Tenerife to attend a Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) meeting focusing on small cetaceans and manatees in West Africa. I am incredibly grateful to Wildlife Trust’s Director, Mary Pearl, for donating frequent flier miles so I could attend this meeting, as well as to WCS for paying for my hotel room. This has
On the Move Last Friday night I flew up to Libreville and finally met up with Tim, who had technical issues with getting his Gabon Visa renewed for the past few weeks. I caught up on some office work this weekend, we ate a lot of good food, and met up with some interesting new folks: Andrea (an Italian vet who is in Gabon to
Friday: we went out to find a dead whale but……instead we found an Olive Ridley sea turtle entangled in old fishing line. I went out to the beach at Gamba with Bas V. from WWF and DeDe (who works with sea turtles for a local NGO called Ibonga) to try to get a few samples from a dead humpback whale that washed up about 10
Lac Cachima and the Nyanga River Last Tuesday I left Gamba again, this time in a truck towing a boat. We headed south of town across the savannah (on an actual road!) to the Nyanga River where we launched the boat. DeDe, my guide (who also took me up the Rembo Bongo) and I headed upriver and then turned into a smaller tributary that took
Back from campingI will post a report of my camping trip to Lake Cachimba and the Nyanga River as soon as I can. It was a great trip! I’m back in Gamba and flying up to Libreville this afternoon, but beforehand I’m headed out to the beach here to look for a humpback whale that stranded about 10 days ago. It should smell pretty ripe
Highlights from the past week There’s way too much to describe, so I’m just going to give a few highlights from each day. Tuesday:– For our first morning out, we headed north to 2 lakes off the lagoon well-known for manatee sightings: Lac Sounga and Lac Simba. Each time I come to Gabon I have this secret fear that after all the preparations and time
Sette Cama is wonderful That about sums up my week here! On Monday, after buying my fuel, a driver brought me here from Gamba. Driving is interesting… the only real dirt road dies out after several miles and then there’s just a deep sandy track across the savannah that gets progressively worse as you go along. We were in a Landrover and the plastic gas
Gas On Monday morning on my way out of town to Sette Cama, we went to the Shell station to buy all my boat fuel. I had to buy 300 liters (that’s a full size oil drum plus 4 extra 25 liter jerri cans) because of the amount of lagoon we’re trying to cover. There are no stores or supplies in Sette Cama, so you