Underwater naturalist exploration in Gabon

The marine fauna of the Gulf of Guinea is one of the least well known in the world; diving conditions and the absence of infrastructures make it particularly difficult to prospect and to identify species. The marine area between Cap Santa-Clara and Cap Estérias, less than twenty kilometres from the centre of the capital, Libreville, had only been the subject of limited scientific work, essentially directed towards sea turtles, symbolic of the efforts to conserve the marine environment in Gabon. No real inventory of the fauna that is specific to the foreshore and to the rocky shoals had been undertaken. The National Agency for National Parks in Gabon and the French Development Agency (AFD) chose to address a part of that deficiency by financing an underwater naturalist exploration mission in Gabon. 6 professional divers and trained naturalists were invited to take part in that mission. They carried out 9 days of exploratory dives, with air tanks or snorkels. 67 fish taxa were identified, 21 of which, a priori, had never been reported before. The divers also identified, for the first time in this area, 26 species of invertebrates (protozoans, cnidarians, sea anemones, molluscs, annelids, shrimps, etc.).