# Lions (Panthera leo) specialising on a marine diet in the Skeleton Coast National Park, Namibia

> On Namibia’s Skeleton Coast, three young lionesses who lost their mother learned to swim to an island to catch roosting cormorants, and then to hunt Cape fur seals on the beach. Over 18 months, the sea supplied most of their food. Using collars, night observation and spoor reconstructions, this study tells how desert lions regained a way of life lost when the coast’s lions were killed in the 1980s.

Summary by Kersey Lawrence, Original Wisdom. Updated 9 November 2026. Page: https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2019-stander-lions-panthera-leo-specialising/

## Citation and access

- **Authors:** P.E. Stander
- **Year published:** 2019
- **Journal or source:** Namibian Journal of Environment
- **Full citation:** Stander, P.E. 2019. Lions (Panthera leo) specialising on a marine diet in the Skeleton Coast National Park, Namibia. Namibian Journal of Environment 3(A): 1-10.
- **DOI:** 10.64640/6p6pqc74
- **Access status:** Open access (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
- **PDF:** https://www.originalwisdom.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/2019_Stander_lions-specialising-on-a-marine-diet.pdf

## Tags

- **Species:** Mammals > Lion
- **Region:** Africa > Namibia
- **Tracking:** Sign surveys; Tracking; Tracks; Tracks and signs identification; Trailing
- **Behaviour and ecology:** Behaviour; Feeding; Home range; Hunting; Intraguild interactions; Kleptoparasitism; Movement; Predation; Range expansion; Scavenging
- **Methods and technology:** Capture-mark-recapture; Descriptive statistics; Direct observation; Geographic Information System (GIS); Global Positioning System (GPS) collars; Telemetry; Very high frequency (VHF) radio collars
- **Data type:** New field data
- **Observer qualification:** Not reported
- **Discipline:** Behaviour and ecology; Wildlife tracking
- **Year published:** 2019

## Detailed keywords

- **Species:** Studied: African lion (Panthera leo), the desert-adapted “Desert lion population” of northwest Namibia, especially the Hoanib Floodplain and Uniab/Obab prides. Food items recorded for the Hoanib Floodplain lionesses: Cape fur seal (Arctocephalus pusillus), Cape cormorant (Phalacrocorax capensis), white-breasted cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo), greater flamingo (Phoenicopterus roseus), red-billed teal (Anas erythrorhyncha), gemsbok (Oryx gazella), porcupine (Hystrix africaeaustralis) and black-backed jackal (Canis mesomelas). A Uniab/Obab lioness also killed white-breasted and Cape cormorants, an adult brown hyaena (Hyaena brunnea) and Cape fur seals; this pride otherwise fed mainly on gemsbok and ostrich (Struthio camelus). Brown hyaenas also lost seal carcasses to the lions. In the study area but not studied: elephant (Loxodonta africana), giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis), springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis). Historical record: a male lion fed on a beached pilot whale (Globicephala melas) in 1985. Other “maritime mammals” discussed: chacma baboon (Papio ursinus), black-backed jackal, brown hyaena, coyote (Canis latrans), Arctic fox (Alopex lagopus), bears (Ursus spp.), polar bear (Ursus maritimus).
- **Location and habitat:** Skeleton Coast National Park (SCNP), northwest Namibia, and the wider Desert Lion Conservation project area of 51,500 km² in the Etendeka Plateau landscape of the northern Namib Desert (annual rainfall 0 to 100 mm), including the Palmwag, Etendeka and Hobatere tourism concessions and communal conservancies. Coastal sites: mouth of the Hoanib River (freshwater spring, island, Hoanib Lagoon, mud-flats), Uniab Delta, Hoaruseb, Huab and Ugab rivers, Torra Bay, Terrace Bay, and the Möwe Bay and Koigab Cape fur seal colonies (four colonies within reach of the lions). Hyper-arid desert, ephemeral river courses, dunes, beaches and the intertidal zone.
- **Topics:** marine diet, maritime mammals (land mammals that feed in the intertidal zone), diet specialisation, coastal foraging, flow of energy and nutrients from sea to land, predation on seals and seabirds, scavenging, stealing carcasses from brown hyaenas, home range size (largest recorded for lions), coastal visits and movement patterns, mental maps of food patches, recolonisation after human-lion conflict, loss and regaining of foraging knowledge, prey selection by seal size, community conservancies and tourism.
- **Statistics or models:** Descriptive statistics (means, ranges, standard deviations, percentages). Home ranges by Minimum Convex Polygon (MCP) from daytime resting spots at least 24 hours apart, with an asymptote check for sample size; mapping in ArcView 3.2. Population estimates from mark-recapture models (not reported in this paper). Matrix of Association Index used to choose which lions to collar. Edible biomass estimated by subtracting the inedible share from prey mass (or the mass of an adult female). Inconsistencies in the paper: (1) the text says the Hoanib Floodplain lionesses killed 13 seals, but Table 2 lists 18 (13 juveniles and 5 sub-adults and adults), as does the abstract; (2) the abstract and text say marine species made up 79% of food items, but Table 2 gives 80 marine items (18 seals, 60 cormorants, 2 flamingos) of 89, about 90% (the 86% of biomass does match the table); (3) the marine diet is said to begin in March 2017 (results) and in May 2017 (methods and discussion); (4) the conclusion speaks of an absence of “more than 35 years”, while the paper describes marine feeding in the 1980s and lions absent from the park between 1990 and 2001; (5) Suraci et al. is cited as 2006 in the text and 2017 in the references.
- **Data type:** New field data. Long-term monitoring of the Desert lion population by the Desert Lion Conservation project from 1997; GPS and satellite collar data over 4 to 9 years per pride (Table 1); the five coastal prides followed from 2002 to 2017; detailed coastal visit records for the Hoanib Floodplain pride (August 2014 to November 2015) and the Uniab/Obab pride (January to November 2015); food intake of the Hoanib Floodplain lionesses recorded May 2017 to November 2018. Also draws on earlier records from the 1980s (Bridgeford 1985 and personal communications).

## Synopsis

### 1. What they did

Lions have lived in the Namib Desert for centuries. In the early 1980s, lions along Namibia’s Skeleton Coast were recorded feeding on Cape fur seals, cormorants and even a beached pilot whale. By 1990, conflict with livestock farmers had wiped them out there. A small group of about 20 desert-adapted lions was found on the eastern edge of the Namib in 1997, and the Desert Lion Conservation project began following them. This paper describes how lions returned to the coast and, years later, learned again to live on food from the sea.

The study covered 51,500 km² of hyper-arid desert in northwest Namibia, including the Skeleton Coast National Park. The author:

- Located and observed lions by tracking spoor and using sound playbacks, and identified every lion, cubs included, from the spot patterns at the base of their whiskers.

- Fitted some adults and sub-adults with very high frequency (VHF), Global Positioning System (GPS) or satellite radio collars, and located them by vehicle, with radio frequency identification (RFID) radio loggers or from an aircraft.

- Watched hunting and feeding from a vehicle the lions were used to, at night with low-light binoculars, thermal-image night vision goggles and infrared equipment. When behaviour could not be seen, it was reconstructed from spoor.

- Surveyed the coast every three months for lion tracks and signs.

- From May 2017 to November 2018, watched the Hoanib Floodplain lionesses for spells of 24 hours to seven days at a time to record everything they killed and ate.

### 2. What they found

Return to the coast and home ranges

- No lions lived in the park from 1990 to 2001. Three lionesses of the Hoaruseb pride began exploring the coast early in 2002, and by 2012 five prides (Ugab, Huab, Uniab, Hoanib Floodplain and Hoaruseb) had home ranges that included the coastline.

- These home ranges averaged 4,726 km² (2,850 to 5,870 km²), the largest recorded for lions, and reached 100 km or more inland. The coast made up only a small part of them (1.3% to 6.9%, mean 3.3%).

- The two prides with the most coast in their ranges visited it most often. The Hoanib Floodplain pride went to the Hoanib River mouth eight times between August 2014 and November 2015, staying an average of 7.5 days and mainly catching gemsbok drawn to fresh water and green grass. The Uniab/Obab pride visited the Uniab Delta six times in 2015, staying an average of 23.3 days and feeding on gemsbok and ostrich. Both prides moved inland between visits.

Seals before 2017

- The first confirmed record of the returning lions eating marine food was in March 2006, when Hoaruseb lionesses were seen feeding on a seal. Over the next ten years lions were seen feeding on adult seals nine times; at least three were killed, and the rest may have been scavenged.

- From the movements of collared lions and spoor surveys along the coast, none of the lions visited the four seal colonies within their reach, and they did not seem aware of this food.

Learning a marine diet in 2017 and 2018

- Early in 2017, a dry year, two prides began using the sea’s food.

- Uniab/Obab pride: in April 2017 a lioness in poor condition began killing cormorants at Torra Bay. In two days she was seen catching and eating ten cormorants and an adult brown hyaena. She then moved south to the Koigab seal colony and killed and ate at least eight adult seals in four weeks.

- Hoanib Floodplain pride: three young lionesses, whose mother had died when they were barely a year old, crossed the dunes and swam to an island at a freshwater spring near the coast, where they caught cormorants roosting at night. They learned to hunt other wetland birds, then followed cormorant flocks and hunted them at night on the mud-flats and coast. There they met seals resting on the beaches. They first scavenged seal carcasses (5) and took seal carcasses from brown hyaenas (2). Early in 2018 they began killing seals themselves, at first only pups under a year old, then larger seals over 50 kg, including a few adult females.

- Over 62 days of observation, backed up by spoor reconstructions, the lionesses killed and ate 89 animals of eight species, about 701 kg of edible food. Most were cormorants (60) and seals (18 in the table; the text says 13). The author reports that seals, cormorants and flamingos made up 79% of the food items and 86% of the biomass.

- The lionesses were often seen exploring the intertidal zone and investigating things in shallow water, but it could not be determined whether they ate other marine animals.

### 3. What they concluded

- After a long absence, lions have returned to the Skeleton Coast to prey on marine animals. As a species, lions can now be counted among the “maritime mammals”, as the largest of the coastal carnivores feeding on marine organisms.

- When the coastal lions of the 1980s were killed, their knowledge of the sea’s food was lost with them. Although lions came back to the park within four years of 1997, it took about 15 more years for them to regain that knowledge.

- Using marine food is an adaptation to a harsh, unpredictable desert. Apart from the 1980s records from the same area, there is no evidence of lions using marine food anywhere else in their range.

- The lions’ behaviour suggests they keep a mental map of food patches in their huge home ranges and visit them at intervals.

- Watching the lionesses forage in the intertidal zone suggests they may learn to take other marine food, such as shellfish, crabs or sea turtles.

- The intertidal zone is a rich, reliable source of energy the desert lions could rely on when food on land is scarce.

### 4. How tracking was or was not used

Tracking was one of the main field methods:

- The study area was covered systematically by tracking spoor (with sound playbacks) to find and observe individual lions.

- The coastal habitat was surveyed every quarter for lion tracks and other signs of lions using it. Together with collar data, these spoor surveys showed that before 2017 no lions visited the seal colonies.

- When hunting or feeding could not be watched directly, it was reconstructed from spoor, following the methods of Liebenberg (1990), Bothma and Le Riche (1993) and Stander et al. (1997). The 2017 to 2018 diet record combines 62 days of direct observation with these spoor reconstructions.

### 5. Tracker or observer certification

Not reported. The paper does not say who did the tracking or spoor reconstructions, or how their skill was assessed. Part of the diet record rests on spoor reconstructions, but the paper does not say how many food items were recorded this way.

### 6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

- Individual identification of every lion from whisker spot patterns in high-quality photographs.

- VHF, GPS and satellite radio collars, located by vehicle, RFID radio loggers or aircraft.

- Sound playbacks to locate lions.

- Night observation from a habituated vehicle with low-light binoculars, thermal-image night vision goggles and infrared equipment. The same vehicle was used for 5 to 10 years at a time so that it would not affect the lions’ behaviour, and it stayed still at a safe distance during hunts.

- Home ranges mapped in ArcView 3.2.

### 7. Implications for conservation (from the paper)

- Lions disappeared from the coast through conflict with livestock farmers in the 1980s. Their recovery followed good rains, growing tourism and benefits to local people through communal conservancies.

- When a population is wiped out, its local knowledge, such as where and how to find food from the sea, can be lost for decades.

- The importance of marine resources to land mammals, the Skeleton Coast lions included, may have been overlooked. In a desert with unpredictable rain, the coast can be an important and reliable food source for the lion population.

### 8. Implications for tracking (Original Wisdom's observations)

_These are Original Wisdom's observations, not the authors'._

- The paper shows how spoor work fills the gaps left by collars and direct watching: quarterly spoor surveys showed where lions did and did not go along the coast, and spoor reconstructions recorded hunts and feeding that could not be seen.

- Because spoor reconstructions are part of the diet record, reporting who did them and how many records came from spoor alone would make results like these easier to judge and compare.

## Cite this summary

Lawrence, K. 2026. Summary of: Lions (Panthera leo) specialising on a marine diet in the Skeleton Coast National Park, Namibia (Stander, 2019). Original Wisdom, Tracking Literature. https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2019-stander-lions-panthera-leo-specialising/