Stay Tuned… I’m now back in Florida for manatee work here, but I’m proceeding with fundraising efforts to continue work with West African manatees, hopefully next spring and summer. This blog will resume when I return to Africa!
A Huge Thank You! To all the wonderful people who helped and supported me in Gabon, shared their advice and boundless enthusiasm, and most of all made me feel welcome. Your dedication to Gabon, it’s protected areas and wildlife is phenominal, and I truly hope I can return to work with you all again and contribute more to understanding the West African manatee there. In
Tim wants a Blog …or at least that’s what he said when he first saw mine! For those of you who don’t know him, Tim is a cetacean biologist who I met at a marine mammal conference last December. Over lunch with mutual friends he mentioned that he was looking for a manatee biologist to come to Gabon to study manatees there. I gave him
More Akanda PicturesBelow is a picture from another fishing village, this one is called Moka. The people were really friendly and most of them spoke English. The mangroves are huge here!Below is Ruth, the most enthusiastic paddler! She was such a good sport about spending her vacation day paddling after we ran out of gas. Ruth runs WCS’s program at Langoue Bai in Ivindo National
AkandaLast weekend I spent a couple days boating around Akanda National Park, looking for manatees, sea turtles and talking to fishermen to see if they hunt or see manatees or turtles. On Friday morning 3 of us boated a zodiac from Libreville around a peninsula (open ocean but relatively calm) to the very shallow bay at Akanda. The water is murky and it was hard
Back in the office and daydreaming of Pongara… Cool Guitarfish I saw swimming along the shore. Tomorrow I’ll head off to Akanda National Park, a half hour drive north of Libreville. I’ll be surveying for manatees and juvenile sea turtles (likely greens, but also possibly hawksbills) with Angela, a sea turtle colleague who works here. Akanda may not have many manatees due to it’s proximity
Pongara I just spent a blissful 3 ½ days in Pongara, a national park across the estuary from Libreville. I was actually in Pointe Denis, a small, very laid back beach with a few houses and hotels that is a favorite weekend getaway spot for Expats in Libreville. It’s near the tip of the peninsula in the upper left corner of the map. The national
Detour To Libreville On Monday I left Iguela in a truck with 8 others from Iguela, and we bumped along the sandy track across the savannah for the hour and a half drive to the airport at Ombooue. We then took a short flight to Port Gentil, where Tim and I had a really nice lunch with Francois, his good friend who has driven the
Sunday Tomorrow morning I leave Iguela. I’ll go to Port Gentil for one night and then fly to Gamba, which is a town on the next lagoon south, the N’Dogo. This lagoon is much bigger and I’ll only have a week there, so I doubt I’ll see all of it. But the idea is to get a sense of the place and meet some of