African Aquatic Conservation Fund

The African manatee program leader supervised four graduate students and 13 trainees from five countries and conducted fieldwork programs in senegal and guinea. One African manatee carcass was recovered and sampled (senegal). African manatee genetics, feeding ecology, and age determination studies continued with collaborators from six African countries. We led educational outreach programs in eight schools in joal, senegal that reached almost 2000 students. The pi and collaborators published four book chapters and one scientific manuscript. An additional eight scientific manuscripts and four book chapters are in preparation.

The African chelonian institute led surveys to document sea turtle poaching and bycatch in mbodiene and joal, senegal in partnership with the joal-fadiouth marine protected area. A new project to document a rare freshwater turtle species began in southeastern senegal and included interviews and field surveys. Aci held the first national sea turtle awareness days for senegal; a five-day event including presentations and educational displays, a skit and beach clean ups. It was attended by 1500 students plus other community members in joal. Sea turtle nests in ngazobil were monitored; 25 nests were documented. Work began for the forest tortoise reintroduction project in cote d'ivoire with building an enclosure and introducing 21 confiscated tortoises into it at azagny national park. The inaugural African scholarship program a regional capacity building workshop for African tortoises and freshwater turtles biology & Conservation has been organized and 12 trainees from 6 west African countries participated. A temporary turtle facility was maintained in ngazobil as well. Aci staff published two scientific publications and many more popular magazine articles.

The west African sea turtle program led projects in gabon, equatorial guinea and cote d'ivoire. In gabon we continued to coordinate the gabon sea turtle partnership, a network of projects to protect sea turtles and their habitat through beach surveillance, research, threat reduction, capacity-building and outreach. We continued analysis of the long-term national database of nesting activities for imminent publication. In equatorial guinea we continued to monitor sea turtle threats and conducted a national awareness-raising campaign, as well as completing a manuscript on the inter and post-nesting behaviour of leatherback females based on satellite telemetry. In cote d'ivoire we continued to collaborate with local partners to monitor and protect 50 km of nesting beaches and implement community-based Conservation initiatives. We were also instrumental in the design and implementation of the country's first marine protected area. We published 5 peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts on a variety of topics, ranging from congo's population trends, to olive ridley global phylogeography, to gabon's ground-breaking marine policies.

The African cetaceans program led projects in madagascar and senegal. In senegal, we continued a study of atlantic humpback dolphins with photo identification surveys throughout delta saloum, deployment/recovery/downloading of four acoustic recorders, and trained three researchers from mauritania, nigeria and cameroon. Additionally, we continued a passive acoustic monitoring program for whales off dakar started in june 2021 with the recovery/redeployment of a recording in july 2022. In madagascar, existing acoustic monitoring recorders at three sites along the west coast including nosy be, mahajanga and toliara were recovered and redeployed, and a deploymenbt was conducted at a new site in the southeast, off fort dauphin. In june 2022, we conducted offshore surveys for blue whales in the waters off nosy be where acoustic monitoring has detected multiple populations. The pi published 5 book chapters, 2 peer-reviewed publications, and 2 scientific reports (iwc).

The senegal stranding network conducted three coastal stranding surveys, as well as responding to carcasses outside of surveys. We documented 49 stranded cetaceans and 61 stranded sea turtles (all were sampled for genetics, taxonomy and other data collection). We partnered with colleagues from the smithsonian museum of natural history for cetacean taxonomy and genetics studies. We also analyzed stranding data collected since 2014 to begin writing a manuscript for scientific publication.