Lions Are Now the Ocean's Apex Predator

We're used to seeing lions chase wildebeest and zebra across the African savannah, but along the skeleton coast of Namibia, a small population of lions have done the unthinkable. They've traded the golden plains and open grasslands for the Atlantic coast where they stock marine creatures like fur seals and cormorants. A recent study found that this marine diet made up a staggering 86% of the total biomass consumed by the world's only maritime lions. I'm KP, a marine biologist who specializes in marine mammals, which are actually an informal group of animals whose survival depends on the ocean. I first learned about these lions from my friend Nodya Dreyer. He's a co-founder of Ocean Conservation Namibia. A little while back, he texted me a photo he took while out on a rescue mission. So when I decided to make this video, I immediately reached out to him to learn more. Okay, cool. So obviously, friends of the channel know you very well, but if you could just introduce yourself for some new people, that'd be awesome. All right, my name is Nodya Dreyer. I'm the co-founder of Ocean Conservation Namibia. We are a non-profit based in Namibia and that's lifting ocean conservation issues. One of our biggest mandate is probably rescuing seals from entanglement in marine debris. We've rescued over a thousand seals this year. That's awesome. I think the number goes up like every year too. Yeah, it's crazy. Set the stage. What makes the Skeleton Coast so inhospitable? I've been reading a little bit about it. It's the wildest place. So the name originally came from the Skeleton Coast because of all the shipwrecks. I mean, traditionally over the last hundreds of years, since people started rounding Africa, there's been so many shipwrecks on that coastline. And this is basically because the ships would navigate close to shore using the shores as like a navigational aid and be clear. And then suddenly this is like the trademark trick of the Skeleton Coast is for this like super thick fog to just roll in absolutely out of nowhere. They'd lose bearings and end up wrecked. And then once you get into shore, there's nothing. There's no water. There's no like groundwater source. There's no flowing rivers. There's no water source on that entire stretch of coastline. Because of that, not just that, there's not much to eat either. So it's just a very inhospitable, wild place. This area where the lions are is about 500 kilometers away from the nearest coastal town. This coastline makes up the western edge of the Namib Desert, one of the oldest and driest deserts in the world. That is so hostile and unforgiving, the indigenous people of the Namibian interior named it the Land God Made in Anger. In order to survive here, the maritime lions have become so uniquely adapted to the Skeleton Coast that they can travel for days without drinking water. They get most of their hydration from the food that they eat. Now, this is something these lions have in common with marine mammals like fur seals, who get all of the water that they need through the chemical reactions involved in breaking down fats that produce water as a byproduct. This is known as metabolic water and combined with highly efficient kidneys allows them to stay hydrated without drinking seawater. Indigenous people have known about the presence of lions along this coast for centuries, but thanks to the area's inaccessibility, their unique marine diet went undocumented by the scientific community until the 1980s. That was when officials first recorded them feasting on cape fur seals, cormorants, and even beached whales. The same decade saw a sharp increase in human-lion conflict. There is a little bit of a history of human-lion conflict, farmers, that sort of thing also in the area? Yeah, lots, unfortunately. So within, not in the park itself, but the park is not super wide. There are still a lot of old, like, traditional farmers in the area and these guys really, really have nothing. So anything that's a threat to their animals is a threat to them. Lions are opportunistic as well a lot of the time. So goats, sheep, cattle make really easy targets. And so they would figure this out really quickly if there was quick and easy food available. And government is just unfortunately not compensating for these losses enough. So people would just take things into their own hands. By 1990, every known maritime lion was gone. Hope for these lions was reignited several years later in 1997 with the discovery of a small remnant pride. Against all odds, 20 Namibian lions were found surviving in a remote mountainous region on the eastern edge of the Namib desert. Thankfully, a lot had changed since the 80s. The Namibian tourism industry was growing and providing value to wildlife. What they're basically doing is trying to create a value to these lions because there's a lot of tourism money coming in. These are such unique animals. There's tourism money coming in which the communities all benefit from and just trying to facilitate that. Yeah, because you can't just tell people that they just have to live with the lions stealing their livelihood. You know, you have to give something back. There has to be like a trade-off there, obviously. No, no, if there's nothing coming, if there's nothing in it for them, then why should they? Within four years, the lion population recovered and repopulated much of their former range. Things took a desperate turn for the lions in 2015 when drought struck Namibia and decimated the zebra population. The plains game started disappearing more and more. These animals got more vulnerable. More of them then seek food from the, I guess, from the farmers. There was very little hope for them. There wasn't food in land. They started realizing they would get shot if they were near the farmers. There wasn't natural plains game for them because the game moves along and a lot of them just died off in the drought. It's been a really, really bad drought. Documented was probably the worst drought in documented history. So these lions came down to the coast. Three female cubs named Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie were orphaned at just 11 months when their mom died on the floodplain. Namibian lions are typically weaned around six to eight months of age, although some sources say it can be as late as 10 months. They only begin to participate in hunts around 11 months, but their hunting skills are not proficient until they are closer to two years old. But against all odds, Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie miraculously survived. Through sheer determination, the young cubs managed to cross the immense dunes to a freshwater spring. There they swam to a small island and began hunting cormorants, ducks, and flamingos with remarkable ingenuity. The lions stopped their prey while submerged in the water and reeds like aquatic predators, like a crocodile. They quickly focused on large flocks of cormorants and followed them across the mudflats to the coast. This change in location was critical as it led the three sisters to the fur seal colonies. The total population of Cape fur seals along the Namibian and South African coast is estimated to be between 1.5 and 2 million, with the majority residing in Namibia. Some of these colonies can exceed 200,000 individuals during the breeding season. And like lions, fur seals are also predators who will aggressively defend themselves. In order to be effective hunters, all predators, from killer whales to polar bears to lions, need some understanding of the behavior and biology of their prey. However, the lions had lost the knowledge of how to find and hunt marine life when the last skeletal coast lions were killed in the 1980s. Lions primarily kill their prey by suffocating it with a powerful bite to the throat. But because fur seals are adapted to life in the ocean, they can hold their breath significantly longer than almost any terrestrial animal. Alpha Bravo and Charlie were inexperienced and didn't know this, so they repeatedly incurred bite marks and lacerations from seals who would get away. Because of these early failures, the young lions had no choice but to scavenge on carcasses they found washed ashore, or occasionally steal from jackals and hyenas. This changed in early 2018 when the lions finally mastered the technique for taking down seals. So what makes this situation so unique is that on their own, these and the current group of animals that are feeding on seals have basically re-taught themselves this. It's just genetically imprinted on them. Something has told them, listen, there's food, let's go. When the drought finally broke, Charlie left the coast and her sisters to join their aunt, the adult lioness known as XPL69, who has taught Charlie how to hunt giraffes. Alpha and Bravo have made the Skeleton Coast a large part of their home range, where they have led a coastal hunting resurgence. Namibia is home to around 80 individual desert lions, with approximately 12 now living and hunting on the Skeleton Coast, including Gamma, Alpha, and her two cubs. And the lion Nodia photographed in 2022, XPL108. I saw your name in the Smithsonian article about lions, which was super cool. And it said that you wanted to see a desert lion since you were five years old. You finally got your chance just, what was it, like a year or two ago? And what was that moment like? There's this camp up in the coast, in the Skeleton Coast. It's a campsite, it's only open for two months of the year. I've been going there with my dad since my whole life, basically. We went up there, we heard the lions were in the area. And so just before the sun went down, my son and I came across two of these lions. It was just, it was incredible. It was something I'd really sort of culminated, been waiting for my whole life. I really felt I put in the time and the hours to see these animals. And all I wanted was the shot of a lion eating a seal with the ocean in the background. And then I got that and I was, oh man, I was so sad. That's unbelievable. And you got to experience it with your son too. Like that's crazy cool. As you can probably tell, I'm a huge fan of ocean conservation Namibia. If you're interested in supporting their heroic efforts to free entangled fur seals, just head over to their website, ocnamibia.org, where you can donate directly to their cause. You can also follow their incredible adventures right here on YouTube. We know the lion's always in the area. Whenever we're going up there, we always message Flip beforehand and say, listen, we're coming just to make sure. Because he's tracking his lions all the time, but we don't want to be running down the beach and suddenly a lion pops up from behind a bush. And I think unfortunately I might be the slowest one on the team. Oh yeah, you got to be faster than your friends. And the problem is these lions are starting to get into the water to hunt seals now too. My plan's always been to swim, but these guys are going to come after us. No, it's been wild. The last two trips up in the mornings. So they're very nocturnal. They hunt till about four or five in the morning usually. And that's just about the time we arrive there. So it's very much a game of checking where they are and making sure. We know they're in the area and there's always a sort of third eye. You've got eyes in the back of your head watching. Oh my gosh. It's crazy. When the lions have been in the area, we can see the seals are skittish. They're dispersed and you just see the carnage. After 35 years, the maritime lions had fully returned to the skeleton coast to prey on marine species and are now listed as maritime mammals. There's a good group of lions now. There's one female is really, really pregnant as well. There are some other males and areas coming in. So for the rest of the females in the group, this could be the next start of the new desert lion population. I mean, they've been really hammered over the last 10 years. And by targeting seals, like I say, they're staying away from the areas where they're more at risk. So if we get 10 or 20 coming out of this over the next few years, then they can start spreading out. This could be really good news. That's why the Desert Lion Conservation, also known as the Desert Lion Project, is doing everything they can to conserve and manage this population for the benefit of both the lions and the Namibian people. Just like as a throwback to one of our previous conversations, any concerns about like rabid fur seals biting these? Oh, no, no, definitely. It's a huge concern. So the researcher, Dr. Flip Stunder, he's up there. He's with the lions all the time. So he's been on the lookout for the rabid behavior. We've actually seen seals that have been a little bit concerning in the area. And the lions are often targeting the isolated animals, which the rabid seals tend to do. They isolate themselves from the groups. So this is a very big concern. And there's often conflict in these. They are fighting. The seals don't go lightly. They bite back. So this is a huge concern for him. So he's looking into vaccination protocols and possibilities now for his lions, because this would be tragic if they had to end like that. If you want to learn more about the maritime lions, including ways that you can help, I posted all the studies and sources down in the descriptions, along with links to the Desert Lion Conservation. One of their goals is to elevate the tourism value of lions and to make sure that this economic benefit reaches the local communities and individual farmers. Your friends at the Desert Lion Conservation are obviously strong advocates for tourism in Namibia. And we've touched a little bit on it, but how can tourism sort of help limit the human-lion conflicts and protect these lions long term, in your opinion? I mean, we can't really rely on state funding for things like this. It's just such a small little niche thing. There are a lot of... I mean, we're still living in a very third world country. There are a lot bigger issues. So we can't expect massive funds coming for this. So the tourism sector does fund a lot of this. In their own interest as well, everybody wants to see the lions. There are some very exclusive high-end lodges in this area that offer people the chance to see these animals. Obviously, with that comes a certain amount of conservation social responsibility that they need to hand back to projects like this to ensure the livelihood of these animals.