Seals

Friday came and at nine Marcie was there in her sporty new Golf Gti. I thought that would be my ride for the day, but at the office, a VW Polo was being prepped for me.

 

Marcie asked where we’d be going. I said first to Cape Cross, it has one of the largest seal colonies in the world. Then to Swakopmund, supposedly a very picturesque old German town. We went, it is not. And lastly Dune 7, a large sand dune in the Walvis Bay vicinity, also nothing to write home about.

 

Well, we can’t let you go to the seal colony with this vehicle, it’s not allowed to go off-road, you’ll need a 4×4. You can go as far as the salt pans, but not to Cape Cross.

 

Okay, not to Cape Cross.

 

I drove the car back to the boat. Picked up Ken and Reineer, a crew member from a French yacht, and five diesel jerrycans, to be filled on the way back. Off to Cape Cross, about a two-hour drive.

 

Driving the skeleton coast. At first, rock formations and sand dunes, then just rock formations, and lastly just a road through barren land, with the ocean, at all times, visible on our left.

 

We passed some brand new settlements, small and probably luxurious, but in the middle of nowhere. One was advertised as an eco-town where the only building presently operational was the Shell gas station. Ken commented that they probably have solar panels on the roof to run their cash registers.

 

We saw a shipwreck, deeply buried down in the rocky beach. Skeleton coast, shipwrecks and whale bones. But it was only named skeleton coast, I believe in 1949, by a British author who wrote about a specific ship that had been shipwrecked on this coast.

 

We drove around Swakopmund, to be visited on the way back, for a spot of lunch, and drove on to the salt pans. A lot of mining going on for the desirable white and pink sea salt. Mountains of it in the distance, but very clear from the many signs, we were not allowed to go there. However, clusters of large salt crystals were set out on low tables on both sides of the road. The smaller clusters were Namibian dollar 50, one size up 100, up from that 150, and the largest 200. Little lockboxes to deposit the money next to each table. No merchants on site.

 

We drove on to Cape Cross. We paid our entrance fee and drove the last two kilometers to the beach. From where we parked the car, the colony didn’t look that big. But the moment I shut off the engine and opened the door, the stench that greeted us was a sure indication, this was not just a group of seals one sees in a marina or a port, this was serious business.

 

We walked up a small incline, I don’t think the smell was getting worse, it possibly couldn’t. We went through a small gate and entered some sort of a wooden walkway about a meter wide, with meter-high walls, like picket fences, taking us into the colony.

 

I have never seen anything like it. Thousands and thousands of seals, probably more than that, lying about, barking at each other. As far as the eye could see, to the north and to the south, seals in the water and seals on the beach. Where we stand is the heart of the colony. Many dead pups lying around, crushed by the big ones.

 

This is the brown fur seal, also called the Cape, or South African fur seal, and also called the Australian fur seal. There are tufts of fur all around us, hanging on the wooden uprights of the walkway. Its distribution is from Black Rocks of Cape Province, South Africa, around the Cape to Cape Cross in Namibia. Adult males grow to around 2.3 meters and weigh up to 350 kg. Females are half the size of that.

 

The hunt for the seal is alive and well in Namibia. In Australia, they stopped hunting them in 1923, and their population is still in recovery mode. South Africa stopped the hunt in 1990, making Namibia the only country in the Southern Hemisphere where the seal hunt is still allowed. Worldwide, it finds itself in the illustrious company of Iceland and Canada.

 

Although the numbers change from year to year, roughly 85,000 pups and 7,000 adult bulls are ‘harvested’ annually. They are hunted for their skin and organs. Same old story, being sold to Asian markets as aphrodisiacs and for traditional medicine.

 

The pups are born in November and December. The hunt is from July until November. All clubbing is done in the early morning hours. After the animal is clubbed, by law, a knife has to be pierced through its heart.

 

It is very well possible that the animals eco-tourists see and photograph during the day, are the same ones led to slaughter the next morning.

 

Lots of controversy around this hunt. The government reasons that they have to cull the population, so the fishing industry stays sustainable. A government-initiated study found that seal colonies consume more fish than the entire fishing industry can catch. Seal Alert South Africa calls that nonsense and estimated less than 0.3% losses to commercial fisheries.

 

On the way, we saw a black-backed jackal and warning signs for brown hyenas. There are very healthy populations of these species in the surrounding wasteland. The rookery is like a catered buffet for them. And how about those seagulls, picking out the eyes of the pups, rendering them helpless, and then feasting on the meat?

 

We had lunch in Swakopmund at an antique store that doubled as a restaurant. Antiques, all sorts of, in the middle of the building, with restaurant tables lining the walls and windows. Kind of weird, but a good lunch.

 

Back in Walvis Bay we filled up the jerrycans and took them to the boat.

 

Beers at the yacht club. What a great day! Tomorrow I’ll return the car and tell Marcie all about our off-roading experience.