There is a road built of salt that leaves the coastal harbour town where I live in Namibia, leaving the industrial hub behind as it winds its way around huge salt water evaporation pans habituated by thousands of waders and other sea birds. The uneven road eventually becomes a track through thick sand onto a wide sandbar about 15km long with a calm bay on the one side, and the pounding Atlantic on the other. Here no humans live; the birdlife is still abundant, but the shorelines are filled with huge black patches - going closer one would see these patches are in fact groups of Cape Fur seals, totalling anything up to over 80,000, from young pups to adults weighing up to 250kg. The sea is also dotted with their heads popping in and out of the water as they swim, sometimes leaping into the air and splashing down again as they play with each other.
Greater flamingos walking through mirror-like water on the salt evaporation pans en route to the seal colony.
A clear juxtaposition of wildlife and industry, with massive sand dunes of the Namib Desert in the background.
A 4x4 vehicle slowly cruises up to each group, the driver scanning the seals with his binoculars. A kayaking tour operator by profession, his business came to a halt a year ago with lockdown and the start of the pandemic. To keep busy he would still drive the 40km each morning from the town to the seal colony to continue his work that the pandemic actually gave him more time for; catching seals entangled in ocean debris, and releasing them after cutting it off.
How does one notice an entanglement in-amongst enormous groups of seals crowded together? Good binoculars, keen eyesight, and practice. Thankfully nothing seen in this group.
This chubby youngster has a fishing line very noticeably entangled twice around his chest, already starting to cut into his skin, and part of it around his jaw as well. He was successfully caught and cut free.
Having a close relationship with this young humanitarian, I was able to join him a number times to photograph his work. Driving out before sunrise, often through thick morning mist, is the best time to get the seals while they are sleepy and still on the beach. Once identified, he gives chase, leaping over and dodging bites from many confused seals, throws a large cone-shaped net over the injured seal’s head to stop it from escaping, pins it down, and cuts off the material choking the animal before releasing it. Smaller younger seals are easier caught by hand rather than using the net.
Giving the chase - sprinting into the group is the quickest way to catch the injured seal before it runs into the sea. The net is strong and has a 2-way zip that can be opened giving access to the entanglement and cutting it loose.
Meet Julius and his ladies, a 120kg male who escaped the capture team many a time, in spite of the strapping cutting into his chest. He was eventually overcome and cut free.
Seals are naturally playful, and anything they find floating in the sea they will push around using their snout, and if it is in the shape of a ring, it will quite easily slip over their head, their flippers, and often in their mouths as they try to rid themselves of it, never to come off again. As the seal gains weight and grows, the ring becomes tighter and tighter, cutting deep into the skin, eventually causing a slow and painful death. Materials that have been cut off are mainly fishing nets and line, packaging straps, ropes, plastic shopping bags, clothing, and once even a toilet seat! If found early enough it is usually a quick and easy release; older and larger entanglements that have started cutting into the skin can take anything up to half an hour to get everything cut and pulled off the animal.
A typical bundle of fishing net after being cut off a seal, the deadly super-fine gill net. All entanglement material is recorded, sorted, and a lot is sent away for recycling.
Seals are incredibly photogenic, especially the curious young pups who group together in nurseries for safety while their mothers are out hunting for fish.
Curious onlookers venture closer to see what this pop of blue in their normally drab environment is all about. How we would love to know what goes through their minds as they are freed…
Exploring this beautiful uninhabited part of the coast during the best photographic hours of the day gave me some new challenges for my work. The weather was very unpredictable - today heavy wet mist down to the ground, tomorrow bright and sunny with stinging sandstorms. Every day I thanked myself for moving over to the smaller and lighter equipment of Fujifilm, especially when giving a long chase through thick beach sand. When I gave up my DSLR 3 years ago I also made a decision to no longer concentrate on wildlife photography which tends to be the norm living in a country like Namibia, a wildlife mecca. However I did keep 1 lens back, my beloved 100-400mm, just for “in-case”. As my largest Fujifilm lens is the XF 50-140 I did find it quite restricting when I couldn’t get close enough for some of my shots, so I resorted to my old Canon lens using a Fringer adaptor for the X-Pro 2 and XH-1 bodies. It still focuses automatically, but oh so slow! If time allowed, manual focus did the trick. A lot of my pictures were made lying flat on the wet sand in front of the captured seal, especially for wide-angle shots, never knowing what would get stuck to my clothes or groundsheet from where hundreds of seals had been lying before. Any glamour I previously had in this job disappeared very very quickly!
Always remember it’s a wild animal. In spite of extra care taken the team have been badly bitten many a time in thanks for their work. Here they work close to the mouth of a young seal where part of an illegal gill net is entangled in her mouth as well as around her neck.
An ordinary everyday scene, and a reminder of what marine pollution is doing to our wildlife. Beach scavengers - black-backed Jackals - nuzzle each other while standing close to a small group of resting seals, one of which has a tight rope around her torso. The entanglements are many, and over 600 seals were released in 2020 from just 2 colonies on our coast line.
The Atlantic Ocean, home to our seals as well as a multitude of marine life and mammals, and as with all the earth’s oceans, under such environmental threat.
Photographing these wild animals in such a sad and unnecessary plight did not justify the more artistic work I normally do. But the fulfilment in seeing an animal running freely back into the sea without human-induced hinderance, as well as the immense pride I have for this modest young man, far outweighed the need for that arty picture. If my work could reach just one person who would change their way of thinking about the consequences of marine abuse, and who would in turn teach others… then I would have achieved my perfect shot.
Misty and hazy conditions often produce conditions for high-key photographs, a genre I love. Here a group of seals edge their way into the ocean against a backdrop of a lighthouse. Hopefully they will be more intent on finding food than to stop and play with a piece of string that could end their life.
For more of my images of ocean life, please visit my PicFair site at https://24atlantic.picfair.com/