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On the weekend after the workshop, Dawda and I traveled to Niumi National Park in the northwest corner of Gambia. On a map it seems relatively close to Banjul, but it turned out to be quite an adventure to get there and back! On Saturday morning we took the ferry back across the Gambia River to the north side town of Barra. One of the […]

On July 14 I traveled from Dakar to Banjul, the capital of Gambia, by car. I traveled with my Gambian colleague, Dawda Saine, who had flown back into Dakar after a work trip to Europe. We took a taxi to the place where you can pick up a “sept place”, the 7 person (plus driver) cars that provide local transport all over Senegal. They’re all old

Thanks everyone for your responses! We found a whale researcher traveling to Gabon tonight and a very generous person donated 5 bags of milk powder to carry over Victor until we sort out the lost bags with Air France. So the milk is on it’s way. All Victor’s caretakers really appreciate everyone’s ideas and help!

Africa friends: If you know anyone traveling from the USA to Gabon anytime soon, please let me know! Air France lost Victor’s milk supplies & the situation is desperate… there’s only enough milk left in Gabon for the next 10 days. We need to find a way to send milk powder to Gabon ASAP. Please comment to this post or email me at: [email protected]. Thanks!!

It’s a bird, it’s a plane… no wait, it’s a MANATEE! This past month an expanded West African manatee educational outreach program hit the streets, or more accurately, took to the water for a tour of Banio Lagoon in southern Gabon. My colleague Aimee Sanders, who has designed and produced almost all my manatee educational materials for Africa (posters, educational panels, t-shirts, and we’re working

I spent Thursday at the university museum in Dakar collecting samples of bone from their archived collection of West African manatee skulls that date back to the 1940’s. This was only allowed after several meetings and much discussion with the museum’s curator (who I’ve promised to share all results with and acknowledge in publications, a small price to pay for such access!), who also then

I’m very happy to report that Puerto Rican manatee Masters student Jonathan Perez-Rivera has returned to Gabon to continue his work with Victor! Jonathan arrived back in Gabon several weeks ago, but this has been in the works for several months, because it’s now time to start weaning Victor off his milk formula and onto an adult manatee diet of native plants so that he’ll

Check out the latest issue of Seagrass Watch magazine, which focuses on manatees and dugongs and includes an article I wrote on West African manatees (there’s also a page about Victor!). Perfect beach reading for summer! 🙂

For the last part of our eastern Senegal trip, we were determined to drive down the eastern side of Lac de Guiers, which we had started when our car originally broke down several weeks ago. Our plan was drive back to Richard-Toll to meet Niaga, our friend from Toleu village, since he knew the eastern side of the lake well. But as we rolled back