Cape Town - Experts are adamant that unusual organisms found at sea are not a common occurrence and that investigations should be done to assess the reasons behind them washing up onto beaches.
Cape Town beaches have over the past few weeks seen an aardvark, porcupine and a human body wash up on the shores.
In mid-January an aardvark that died of heart failure was found at Milnerton beach, followed by the body of a woman in a white bikini at Camps Bay beach.
Dr Simon Elwen from Stellenbosch University said he is working on Cape fur seal behaviour and die-offs and investigating the multiple possible causes. He said that most of these are natural, and seals have a high mortality rate in the first year of life, with pups being lost to storms, cold weather, starvation and being separated from their mothers.
“Mothers may drop pups early or abandon them due to starvation (usually associated with changes in prey which can be human-caused), but also disease and harmful algal blooms.
“There has been a lot of press and social media on seal deaths over the last two or three years which can create a bit of a positive feedback loop with the public as they become more aware of dead things on beaches. So numbers aren’t necessarily higher, just more reports,” he said.
At the beginning of January, a seal was seen in widely circulated videos attacking a young boy at Clifton beach.
Elwen said their work on die-offs to date suggests a possible link to harmful algal blooms as the toxin has been found in some of the animals, but they are continuing to work on this before the link can be confirmed.
“In terms of other unusual animals like the aardvark and porcupine, although the beaches here are on the edge of their range and they could have washed down a river or walked on the beach, it seems more likely, at least certainly possible, that it is related to the muti industry or the illegal wildlife trade and the issues should definitely be investigated. This is a massive illegal industry with major impacts on animal conservation globally,” he said.
Wildlife supervisor at the SPCA Jon Friedman considers finding a deceased aardvark on a beach an uncommon occurrence.
“When you consider that aardvarks are not typically coastal animals, also that they are not that common a species to begin with, having one wash up on a beach in a very built-up metro area such as Milnerton is considered strange and definitely unusual.
“We are aware of aardvark bodies having washed up in other places like the Eastern Cape and Namibia over time, but this would be our first case for Cape Town that we are investigating.
“We hope that the occurrence of any of our indigenous animals, including aardvarks, washing up on our beaches does not become a recurring trend, but only time will tell. We hope that the instances relating to this event are not repeated. This is an ongoing investigation,” he said.
Ann Kunz from the South African Association for Marine Biological Research (Saambr) said that KwaZulu-Natal has been receiving unusual animals, called salps, or sea salps that washed up on their beaches this past weekend.
She said they were probably brought onto the shore by a combination of up-welling of deeper water and then being pushed close to the shore by strong onshore winds and currents. She said unusual organisms washed up at sea were not uncommon, especially when there has been heavy rainfall, which KZN has experienced recently, but found it odd that animals like the aardvark were being found in Cape Town as there has been little to no rainfall recently.
SAPS said that the circumstances surrounding the incident of a dead woman found in Camps Bay is still under investigation.
Anyone with information that can assist with the identification of the victim is kindly requested to call Crime Stop at 08600 10111.