Ghana: Manatee Training Workshop 2009 I just spent an action-packed two weeks at Lake Volta, Ghana teaching a research and conservation training workshop for the West African manatee! It was great. This is my second year participating in the workshop, and co-teaching it with Patrick Ofori-Dansen from the University of Ghana. It’s funded by Earthwatch and coordinated by Nature Conservation Research Center (NCRC, a Ghanian […]

Senegal: Delta Saloum Last week I spent three days in the northern part of the Saloum Delta, a huge mangrove estuary in central Senegal. It s a beautiful area with salt flats filled with flamingoes, savannah with giant baobab trees, countless mangrove channels and lots of fishing boats. I had a chance to talk to many fishermen about manatees there and to distribute informational posters,

Senegal: Diama Dam On our way back to Dakar we stopped at the Diama Dam, built in 1984 near St. Louis at the mouth of the Senegal River. This dam now traps manatees in the river and although they have well over 600 km of river to use, as well as Lac de Guiers and much more area during the rainy season when the river

Senegal: To Kanel and Back Our trip last week got off to a rough start. The first day we left Dakar at 6am and our rented car and driver (many rented cars here come with a driver) drove us 3 hours north of Dakar to the colonial era town of St. Louis. We had breakfast there and afterward expected to continue on the long trip

Senegal: Off to the Desert! Since my arrival in Dakar I’ve been enjoying time with my fiance, Senegalese turtle and manatee researcher Tomas Diagne, and planning logistics for future manatee work here. After 2 weeks of planning we are now ready to go into the field! It seems funny to say we’re going to the desert to track manatees! But it’s true… In late August

Building and Packing Some people have the nice but misguided belief that manatee research is all just swimming in beautiful clear, blue water watching the manatees eat and play, and occasionally scratching them. Ummm…. no. I wear many hats in this job, most of which I had no idea about when I started many years ago. Plumber, electrician, cartographer, politician, boat mechanic, grant writer, and

Senegal: A couple more surprises…. Our last tagged manatee in Senegal (the female in the Senegal River on the far eastern side of the country, at the border with Mauritania) made another big move northward again in late July. But this time she left the main Senegal River and entered a tributary in early August. This is not the tributary we rescued her from last

TributeThe manatee community was stunned and saddened today to learn of the death of our colleague Akoi Kouadio of Cote D’Ivoire. Akoi worked tirelessly with West African manatees for many years after being trained by Buddy Powell in the mid-1980’s. He did his PhD work on the manatees of Fresco Lagoon in Cote D’Ivoire and also did surveys in the Congo and several other African

Senegal Tagged Manatee Update As some of you will recall, last January I satellite tagged three manatees in eastern Senegal as part of a multi-agency group that rescued them from tributaries where they were trapped behind dams (See posting from 1/31/09). We released the manatees back into the Senegal River and they have been tracked since then by my colleagues at CBD-Habitat (the Spanish NGO