Survey for Rare Monk Seals off Northwest Africa, May 2005

IFAW’s Song of the Whale team worked closely with several partner organisations - the Spanish group CBD-Habitat Fundacion, the Institute National de Recherche Halieutique (INRH) of Morocco, and Dakhla based NGO, Nature Initiative – on an exciting project to find out if the critically endangered Mediterranean monk seal inhabits a stretch of coastline northwards from the Mauritanian border into Morocco.

The Mediterranean Monk Seal is one of the most endangered species on the planet, and there could be as few as 500 individual seals left. A colony of about 170 seals inhabit the Cap Blanc peninsula on the border of Mauritania and Morocco; CBD-Habitat has been involved in the monitoring and protection of this colony for many years.

However, very little survey work has been done to the north of this peninsula as the coast and cliffs are difficult to access from land. Song of the Whale is ideally suited for this type of marine research as the team can use inshore inflatables launched from the boat to help search for seals close to the cliffs along this remote and harsh Saharan coast. Even the discovery of a handful of animals would be a major finding, adding significantly to the known world population estimates.