LEFT Tufted ghost crabs (Ocypode cursor) feed on a seal carcass. These crabs are scavengers and head for the water as soon as they sense danger. They live in burrows above the high-water mark.
T
his could have happened a few hundred years ago on Namibia’s notorious Skeleton Coast in the northwest of the country. Some human remains have been found, also a number of shipwrecks or parts thereof. Nobody will ever know how many ships have sunk off these hostile shores. How many ship-wrecked sailors made it to the beach and then perished is not known either. Most of the bones found on that coastline are not of human origin but mainly from marine mammals. For hundreds of years the carcasses of these animals, some of them colossal, have washed up on the beaches. The death of one means life for others. Blackbacked jackals and brown hyenas scour the beaches to scavenge on opportune food sources. Even lions have been seen enjoying a meal of whale meat in this barren part of Namibia. Gulls and crabs, too, survive on marine animals. The northern beaches of Skeleton Coast National Park are the only place where ghost crabs (Ocypode cursor and Ocypode africana) are found in Namibia. They move around the beach in large groups, feed on carcasses and scurry into the water at the first sign of danger. The bones of whales, dolphins, seals – and in a few cases humans – have been deposited on the coast, the Skeleton Coast, for centuries. Sometimes, when travelling along the beach of Skeleton Coast National Park, which extends over a length of 500 kilometres from the Ugab River in the south to the Kunene River in the north, you will not spot a single carcass. At other times a number of dead whales and dolphins can be seen above the high-water mark. Orcas (also known as killer whales), pilot whales, humpback whales, bottlenose dolphins and Heaviside´s dolphins have been washed up in recent years. Even the skeleton of a crocodile was once found a few kilometres south of the Kunene River mouth. It is not known why many dolphins, whales, seals and other marine animals and forms of life die on this particular part of the African coast and find their last resting place there. The cold Benguela Current is full of secrets.
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BELOW A black-backed jackal has been feeding on a seal carcass while a kelp gull waits its turn in the background. These two species are the most common scavengers found on Namibia´s coastline. Dead whales and dolphins are sometimes found above the highwater mark.