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Things To Do in Namibia

Cape Cross Seal Colony


  • Namibia, Africa
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Seals As Far As the Eye Can See!

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The Cape Cross Seal Colony, Near Swakopmund, Namibia

We stayed the night in Swakopmund and had quite a long drive to Vingerklip but decided as we were so near that we would make the effort to drive up 72km further north to see the world’s largest seal breeding colony and then drive back towards Swakopmund and then inland towards Vinkerklip. We must be mad but neither of us likes to miss anything when we are on our travels and we seemed to be so close that we felt it was worth the journey.

The journey from Swakopmund to the Cape Cross seal Colony was very strange as it was all along the coast on a sand /salt road and all that you could see either side was more sand. There was nothing at all for miles and miles and we counted the minutes between vehicles and sometimes it was 15 minutes before we saw another car or indeed anything else. It was almost like snow blindness at times despite the fact that it was overcast rather than sunny that day it was still glary and I had to keep shutting my eyes just to give them a break, I wasn’t driving, you will be relieved to hear.

We did see a couple of ship wrecks along the way but as we were on a mission to get up tothe seals and then across to Vingerkip we didn’t attempt to try and get across to the shore via the ‘roads’ that were vaguely marked across the sand. This was not the main part of the skeleton coast but we were happy that we had at least seen a couple of ship ‘skeletons’ which Namibia is famous for.

After a very tedious drive landscape wise we arrived at Cape Cross which is really just a collection of huts and not much else. We had to pay to enter the reserve at a very small hut. We were greeted by a family who obviously were responsible for ticket sales. The children smiled and followed us for a while but then lost interest as we went into the hut to purchase our permit. There were basic toilet facilities there which were handy as there was nowhere else to stop on the road between here and Swakopmund and we had to go back almost all the same way after visiting the seals.

Cape Cross is so called because in 1486 a Portuguese navigator called Diego Cão on one of his journeys trying to find a way to the Far East landed here and erected a stone cross or padrão to mark the fact that he was the first European to reach this far south of the west coast of Africa. The cross was there until the 1890s when it was taken to the Oceanographic museum in Berlin but a replica was put in its place in 1974 and this is what can be seen at Cape cross today.

We came specifically to see the seal colony rather than the cross but it interesting to learn why the area was called Cape cross. The seal colony was proclaimed a nature reserve for this breeding colony of Cape fur seals in 1968. There are twenty three colonies of Cape fur seals but this is the largest of them and possibly the easiest to get to as well. There numbers of seals at this colony ranges from 200,000 to 340,000 depending on the time of year. These seals do not migrate but they do individually travel quite great distances. Some tagged seals have been tracked in South Africa and up to this colony in Namibia which is some distance around the Cape.

The adult males spend less time at the colony and arrive around mid October to stake their claim. The females arrive shortly after this and give birth. The males mate with the females very shortly after they have given birth and each male has a harem of about 25 females. The females only nurse their own pups and the bond between mother and pup is very strongly formed early on. The female is therefore pregnant almost continually but the eggs lay dormant for about three months and the development of the egg into a pup takes about 9 months after the dormant period.

Although the seals are a protected species in this area the pups do die in huge numbers. The mortality rate is about 27% which I was really shocked at it seemed really low to me. The pups are at the greatest risk during their first week after birth as some are premature, some trampled by their mothers or other seals by mistake, some pups and mothers get separated in stampedes or mum might get killed out at sea. About 25% of the pups are taken by jackals and hyenas which live locally and the pups make a very easy meal.

As you arrived at the beach the noise was unbelievable. The honkng and screeching of the seals was so loud and constant it would have rivalled the vuvuzelas at the World Cup. . Along with the noise there was a vision of movement as the entire beach was covered with seals and wobbling , waving their heads, fighting, sleeping, heaving themselves around. It was like watching a bucket of worms wriggling around only larger and far, far noisier. Beside the noise and the sight you also enjoyed the smell which was a mixture of smelly fish and seal poo. The whole experience was not really beautiful but it was something I will not forget in a hurry. Individually the seals had lovely faces with eyes and eyelashes anyone would be jealous of but their bodies leave a lot to be desired as they blob around in a most ungainly fashion around the place.

I was so stunned by the overall noise that I turned my camera to video and took videos as I really think that unless you had actually heard the noise and had seen the sheer number of heaving fat blobby bodies that you would believe the description. As far as you could see in either direction along the coast there were seals wriggling and honking, it was as if the entire ground was undulating with brown rounded seal shaped boulders.


The seals were also in the sea and a number of the young seals were practising their swimming in the rock pools at the edge of the beach. Some of the seals had managed to find themselves rocks to mount and from here they looked down upon the rest of the community squabbling and fighting for space to sit or lie.

Seals eat about 8% of the body weight in fish per day and naturally local fishermen want to see the seal population reduced .However the aim is to maintain the population numbers at their present state in this reserve as the balance of the local marine ecosystem need to be kept and so reduction of the seal numbers is unlikely.

This is an amazing place to visit, the noise, smell and physical spectacle is like nothing I have ever seen before. The seals had beautiful faces with such doleful sad eyes but their bodies are not in the least enviable and if that is what a diet of fish does for you then I shall be a bit careful not to over eat seafood in future!

It was definitely worth the 150 km round trip to see this amazing colony of seals and it is great that people can visit the reserve. There have been special ramps or ' wooden' piers (built from recycled plastic to look like timber according to a notice on the rails) over the beach area so that you can get really close to the seals without disturbing them too much. You are NOT allowed to go onto the beach and walk amongst the seals though I cannot see anyone being tempted to do this but you never k now. There are notices telling you that you must not walk amongst the seals as it may cause stampedes which can result in pups being squashed by the adults. I remember it cost us $90 Namibian which is about £10 to visit this reserve and it was well worth this price for an unforgettable experience.

If you are into lichen then just near this Seal reserve is the Cape Cross lichen reserve. Lichen are a bit like the resurrection plants that you can buy, once they become wet then they come back to life displaying a range of colours. You are not allowed to walk on the lichen areas and they didn’t interest us in the same way as the seals had done so we made our way back towards Swakopmund then on to Vingerklip via the Twyfelfontein World Heritage site and the Petrified forests which I hope to review at a later date.
From journal Namibian Odyssey