Skeleton Coast

IUCN Category II - National Park

Shipwreck on the Skeleton Coast

As Skeleton Coast (English Skeleton Coast), the northern part of the coast of Namibia and its hinterland is called, which extends to northern Angola from Swakopmund to the Kunene, the border river. The hostile, extremely dry Namib Desert along the Skeleton Coast begins directly on the Atlantic Ocean and is therefore also referred to as a coastal desert. It is true that the southern part of the Namib desert starts right by the sea and has similar conditions, this section is not counted to the Skeleton Coast.

Geologically, much of the Skeleton Coast with an age of up to 1.5 billion years ago to the oldest land formations on earth. Fog, heavy surf and unpredictable, strong currents - by the coast northward flowing Benguela - make the coast from time immemorial and still dangerous for navigation. Along the coast lay hundreds of shipwrecks near the shore and on the beach witness to this. The castaway who still shattered from the on shore or stranded wrecks had been able to save, in the uninhabited, extremely dry coastal desert had no chance of survival and died of thirst. The name therefore refers to both the ship " skeletons ", the real skeletons of stranded, but also to the numerous skeletons of scavenged land whales. The current coming from the Antarctic cold Benguela Current is also the cause of the right by the beach incipient coastal desert.

The Skeleton Coast is popular in the southern part to Torra Bay which is accessible to the public recreation area ( National Recreation Area west coast) and because of its abundance of fish, especially with anglers. Their rush has triggered several anglers camps. One of these camps has now become a veritable City: Henties Bay. The northern part is a national park.

Wildlife

The great abundance of fish also has other guests lured: South African fur seals, also known as eared seals. They live in huge, up to 100,000 animals counting colonies on the entire Atlantic coast of Namibia, for example, at Cape Frio, but mostly inaccessible in the diamond area in the south. On the Skeleton Coast at Cape Cross - about 70 km north of Henties Bay - but there is a publicly accessible colony.

Despite their hostility there on the Skeleton Coast quite a rich animal life - some nutritionally based on the large seal colonies, as well as black-backed jackal, brown hyena and even a few desert lions - but also, regardless of elephants ( see below), giraffes and rhinos, oryx, kudu and zebra. Special features of the Namib are also the endemic lizard sand shield and the fog drinkers Beetle. The flora consists inter alia of lichens, pencil bush Arthraerua leubnitziae, Nara and live rock.

A special phenomenon of the Skeleton Coast, the former legendary desert elephants. "Fabled" mainly because locals Although reported repeatedly about their sighting, according to the findings of science but elephants under the prevailing conditions here - water and lack of food - allegedly could not have been there. It is largely thanks to the well-known wildlife filmmaker - couple Des and Jen Bartlett, now that the rebuttal could be commenced. In almost 10 years of work in the Skeleton Coast Park, the Bartletts have tracked the desert elephant, pursued on foot and by Trike, filmed and their special, adapted to the desert conditions of life documented (movies had already started this in Germany ). However, controversy remains as to whether it is a separate subspecies of the African elephant at this elephant.

Coast Park

Skeleton Coast National Park (English: Skeleton Coast National Park ) is called the northern 500 km from Ugab Rivier ( = only temporarily water-bearing river ) to the Kunene -reaching nature reserve on the Skeleton Coast of Namibia. In the east the borders 16,845 km ² large nature reserve to the Kaokoland. The Skeleton Coast Park consists of two zones, the southern is freely accessible and the northern may be only in a small area under the leadership according licensed travel company that entertain a few overnight camps visited here.

The national park was founded in 2009 on the Namib- Skeleton Coast National Park.

The park entrance is located a few kilometers north of mile 108 before Ugab, one of the largest of the Namib Riviere, who has dug here a wild and impressive canyon in the marble, dolomite and shale layers. The park consists here of a gray gravel area, only 100 km north of the park entrance at Torra Bay begin dune fields.

North of the Huab Rivier is situated on the beach and serves a former Ölbohrstation Cape cormorants breeding ground. A few kilometers north of Torra Bay lies the wreck of the Atlantic and Pride in a canyon of colored sandstone there is a waterfall in the middle of the desert.

In the northern part of the coastal parks a special natural phenomenon near the Hoarusib Rivier is to observe and listen: the tube ends dunes of Terracebucht. The dune sand here is such that it similar to a snow board to slide down the dunes slope at a certain wind strength and direction, creating a resoniertes from the dunes body friction noise that resembles a approaching aircraft squadron and can be heard for miles.

Gallery

Wreck of a fishing trawler from recent times

Seal colony at Cape Cross

A seal at Cape Cross

Rock formation in the surf zone

From the wreck of this timber ship only the wooden keel, the metal engine block and the winch (rear) are obtained

Overgrown with lichen stone near the beach

Brownanthus kuntzei, a water-storing succulent plant

Quiver trees in the Skeleton Coast National Park

Seal colony from the air

Road through the Namib Desert in the hinterland of the Skeleton Coast