 The angler shuffled along to the back of his boat and as he bent to place the tackle box near the outboard he was vaguely aware of a erratic swirling in the current under a clump of papyrus. But the Okavango River was almost in full flood and the many treacherous patches of undertow provided just another good reason to resist the temptation to cool off in the sweet, clear water.
It was only later - after the water behind the boat had erupted, and the business end of a large crocodile had launched itself skyward - that the angler placed any importance in the swirling current. Less than a minute after that he ran into our camp and, white-faced and visibly shaking, gasped: “Are you the croc man?…Are you the croc man?”
I fought against the almost insurmountable urge to masquerade, even fleetingly (and from the safety of dry land), as ‘Croc Man’ but was finally able to admit: “No, I’m not - but, hang on, I’ll get the Croc Lady.”
There are two people in the world who certainly do merit the title of ‘Croc Lady,’ and Aliki Strydom is one of them. When you’ve been out on the Okavango on a star-studded African night and seen Aliki plough the boat into a reed-bed; jam it into reverse; leap into the bows over the heads of six volunteers; then dash instantly back to the controls to steady the vessel you begin to get an inkling of just what is involved in this unusual line of work. Then - as you’re still trying to brush off the dozens of spiders that you collected in the collision with the reeds - Aliki calmly displays 50cm of writhing crocodile gripped in her free hand and you finally understand what it takes to be a Croc Lady.
The 26 year-old South African did an MSc degree in zoology at Stellenbosch University before heading off to Botswana’s Okavango Delta to take part in a four-year study of the ecology and physiology of the Nile Crocodile. The project is the brainchild of Dr Alison Leslie who - after almost a decade’s experience with crocodilians in South Africa, Central America and the US - is the other person who undoubtedly qualifies as a ‘Croc Lady.’ (In fact she appeared as such on US television in Jack Hanna’s Animal Adventures.)
While the prime objective is the conservation of the crocodiles, Dr Leslie (who also lectures in ‘wetland ecology’ at Stellenbosch) is adamant that the reptiles can give vital clues to the well-being of the Okavango as a whole: “As a keystone species, the Nile Crocodile influences many trophic levels below it, and is thus responsible for the vital functioning of this greatest of Africa’s wildernesses.”
The study is currently based at Shakawe Fishing Lodge, high on The Panhandle where the Okavango, having fallen from the distant highlands of Angola, still has the appearance of a mighty river before it spreads out into a tangled maze of lagoons and channels that covers an area the size of Switzerland. The scale of the Okavango system is such that it can take 6 months for the waters that flow through The Panhandle to reach the delta’s southern shore.
The old-time crocodile hunters who once plied the Okavango in search of what they disparagingly referred to as ‘handbags’ recognised The Panhandle as the main nesting site. In fact as many as 99% of all Okavango crocs are hatched here so the area is of prime importance to Dr Leslie’s study.
The official estimate is that 48,000 crocodiles were taken from the wild between 1957 and 1969, but by 1974 all the official records had mysteriously been mislaid. The simple fact that there are still crocodiles in the delta after almost 50 years of concentrated exploitation by hide-hunters and crocodile farmers would seem to be a positive sign of the resilience of this living dinosaur. Paradoxically Dr Leslie sees crocodile farming and egg harvesting as an ally in her fight to secure the future of the Okavango crocodiles. “Crocodile farming gives an economic value to an otherwise ‘unwanted’ species,” she explains. “By providing meat for human consumption and skins for the luxury leather industry throughout the world it has had a positive effect on the conservation of many crocodilian species in the wild.”
Having collected data on such things as population, distribution, breeding success rates and habitat throughout the delta, the Croc Ladies hope to educate the local people and to influence a return to profitable and sustainable crocodile farming in Botswana and, ultimately, other African countries. The project will provide vital information on such things as the favourable breeding ratio of males to females and (since the sex of hatchlings is dependent on temperature) the temperatures required to maintain a balance despite changes in the habitat.
Nobody knows exactly how many people are killed by crocodiles every year throughout the world but estimates go well into the thousands. One man-eater that was shot in Kihange River in Central Africa in 1968 was believed to have accounted for about 400 human deaths. Crocodiles are, understandably, not popular among local fishermen and farmers and the future could be bleak unless the people who live along The Panhandle can also be convinced that the reptiles are capable of laying the proverbial ‘golden egg.’
There is a lot of work to be done over the next four years and manpower and funds are, as ever, the first stumbling blocks to be overcome. Far from being a ‘Croc Man’ myself, I was part of a team of volunteers who had been attracted to the study by Earthwatch. There was also Bob ‘Big Fella’ Foster, a lawyer from Florida; Bernard and Rebecca, doctors of psychiatry from Georgia and Florida respectively (“We can’t stop you bleeding to death,” Rebecca warned me, “but we can help you relax while it happens.”); Doug, owner of several Brighton bars; and Jud Traphagen, a New York investment advisor. We were all ‘croc-virgins’ but without the work that volunteers like us would carry out during our fortnight visit, and the cash injection through Earthwatch, the project might never get off the ground.
Dr Leslie was away lecturing when we arrived but to counterbalance our lack of experience Aliki was also able to rely on René – who left a job breaking horses on a Cape ranch to become another Okavango croc-catcher extraordinaire and the celebrated designer of the ‘Hensen Box Trap.’ René is now working on adapting floating and portable versions of this - very attractive (and sometimes effective) - trap, for use in the more inaccessible backwater channels of the delta.
Our tasks would include helping René with the manufacture of more traps and collecting data on any crocs that were lured into them by chunks of fresh, bloody red meat (Okavango crocs seem to be unusually finicky).
 Our first croc was 1.6 metres of pure, hissing wrath by the time we had untied the trap and carried it out of the shallows. There is a certain amount of concentration required in trap invention; likewise in the collection of scientific data from an uncooperative specimen; but to get from one activity to another requires dealing with a furious crocodile that is desperate only to regain its liberty…and, perhaps, to exact some revenge on its tormentors.
Aliki explained the procedure carefully: René would ease the noose up into the trap and get it over the croc’s neck, then she would grab the tail and between them they would pull it out…
Croc-hunting is a wonderful thing for focussing the concentration – and I had paid Aliki the utmost attention but there seemed to be something that I missed: “Hang on a minute,” I interrupted just as René was easing the noose through a gap in the trap door, “what’s that about me throwing a towel over its head?!”
Earthwatch’s expedition brief had given me the distinct idea that croc-hunting in the new millennium was a hi-tech affair that had developed to a veritable science. But now I was being told that it was necessary to subdue 1.6-metres of perfectly evolved killer reptile with a wet towel!
I was willing to admit that I had very little understanding of crocodile dynamics but it seemed that something I had read somewhere had given me the distinct idea that a crocodile of this size should have no trouble biting its way through a wet towel. Couldn’t I throw something heavier, I wondered: the pickaxe handle that we carried as ‘croc repellent’?; the outboard motor?; Big Bob Foster?…
But by now the croc was already halfway out of the trap and I was standing just behind Aliki (braced for a strategic retreat), armed only with a wet rag.
I’ve been accused of gullibility in the past but, even as I launched myself past Aliki toward those snapping jaws, I was thinking: ‘the insurance company is never going to buy this!’
It has been estimated that a 1 ton croc is capable of exerting a bite pressure of 13 tons – which means that even the relatively small one whose jaws I was now wrapped around the outside of would be capable of a nasty nip if, in a moment of confusion, I allowed him to switch places.
If crocodiles have a design error (and after 200 million years of evolution it’s unlikely that they do) it could be that their adaptation for rapid dashes and lightening quick kills has left them slightly short on stamina. I began to understand that all those seemingly fearless ‘crocodile wrestlers’ know that there is a period of relative safety when even a large crocodile must slow down and conserve its energy. In a single breath all of the diabolical hissing and growling changed to the almost kittenish mewing that I was already familiar with from young hatchlings that we had caught from the boat.
It’s a call that could be described even as cute, though it carried a special weight at night when you would feel sure that it was designed to awaken the protective instincts of some monstrous parent, lurking just behind you in the dark water. We huddled in the belly of the boat - with the honking of grazing hippos drifting across the floodplains and the whining of mosquitoes in our ears - and tried to concentrate on measuring, weighing and ‘scuting’ (a means of identification that requires the, apparently painless, clipping of tail scales).
Most nights we went out on patrol, spotlighting up and down The Panhandle, looking for the gleam of red eyes that would give away the position of a crocodile. In the narrow channels the glare of the lamp turned the clouds of bugs into blizzards that blew around us so thickly that we wore bandannas over our faces, and the breeze on the open river could be surprisingly cold. (“You know, of course, that the sex of crocs is temperature dependent,” Bob pointed out, “- that’s because they freeze their nuts off on nights like this.”)
There was something eerie about spotlighting off the front of a small boat (small at least in comparison with the 6m crocs that inhabit the Okavango) in a channel that was so narrow that the hippo grass brushed our faces. Once again the hi-tech world of modern croc-catching has failed to come up with a more effective way of catching hatchlings than to freeze them in place with a spotlight and then grab them. Really quickly. (The slightly slower Bob Foster method, of withdrawing hand with hatchling attached, also seems to work…but it’s messier.)
To me every channel looked pretty much identical - and the immense arc of southern hemisphere constellations gave little clue as to our direction - but Aliki and René had already spent so much time mapping the area by GPS that they now knew the doglegs and oxbows of this part of The Panhandle about as well as anyone.
While we were sometimes out on the river until dawn and often woke in the early hours to dodge the moonlight that would sabotage our spotlighting efforts, it’s a long way from a life of toil and hardship on an Earthwatch project. Accommodation was in a wonderfully situated tented camp right next to the river where kingfishers hunted and otters played. The traditional campfire fare alone – everything from braai steaks to grilled cobra – was worth a journey to Botswana! On free days we went to visit the incredible Bushmen paintings at Tsodilo Hills – described by Laurens van der Post as ‘a Louvre in the desert’ - and for a day of game driving (among buffalo, elephant, giraffe, sable, hippos…and more crocs) in Namibia’s Mahango National Park.
After two weeks plying the waters of The Panhandle I was possessed with a permanent attraction for this unique part of the delta but also with a new respect, not only for the crocodiles but also for the people who work with them. This respect was sufficient even to overcome the devilish temptation to masquerade as ‘Croc Man’ when the panic-stricken angler gasped into camp on our last afternoon in the Okavango.
 Within a few minutes Aliki was easing the boat into the dense tangle of reeds and René and I were hauling on the overhanging acacia, to drag us into the gloomy shadows where a large croc lay watching us with total unconcern. He was pushing 4 metres and - unlike the 80 year-old (6-metre) monsters that remember croc-hunters of a more brutal kind – was clearly certain that he could have nothing to fear from our kind.
But he was suspiciously close to the beach that was the village’s communal laundry, and from where a cow had been snatched several weeks before. The human distrust of crocodiles is deeply imbedded and there are some who feel that there is no longer room enough for both humans and crocodiles along the Okavango Panhandle.
This self-assured reptile radiated the confidence that comes from millions of years as the undisputed lord of Africa’s wetlands but he could have no idea of the vital part that the Crocodile Ladies are playing in trying to secure his future.
Earthwatch: As a non-profit, charity organisation with more than 130 research projects in over 45 countries Earthwatch offers enough exciting experiences to fill several lifetimes. This year they will send some 4,000 volunteers to work with 200 scientists in regions as far-flung as Brazil’s Mato Grosso and Canada’s Hudson Bay. If you’re interested in getting something more out of your travel experiences – while at the same time putting something back – see www.earthwatch.org. |
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