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.
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.
Monk seals off Cap Blanc, NW Africa.
Photo © Michel Cedenilla/CBD-Habitat
