Diamond Boats of Lüderitz

As we motored into Lüderitz harbor a few weeks ago, we noticed fishing boats with long tubes/hoses extending into the water off their sterns. We'd never seen anything like this before and we wondered what they were. The answer? They're used for sucking up diamonds from the seabed.

Obviously, with all the restricted “Sperrgebiet” areas offshore, we expected to see the diamond mining boats, but we weren't sure exactly what they'd look like. I guess we expected really high-tech, not fishing boats with vacuum hoses. Talking with some folks in the industry, there are, indeed, some very large, high-tech recovery ships out there, but for the most part, here in Lüderitz,  the diamond-mining fleet are converted fishing vessels. They go out for 3-4 weeks at a time, suck up potentially-rich alluvial sand and then offload it at the local Namdeb (Namibia-DeBeers Diamond Corporation) Contractor Treatment Facility (CTF) processing plant for sifting and sorting.

The boats are privately owned and the owners work as contractors for Namdeb, sampling and mining the shallow waters between Oranjemund to the south and Luderitz. The specially outfitted fishing vessels are each given a certain section to explore and mine. The boats are used as mining platforms. It's up to the owners to conduct diver-assisted exploration, figure out what areas have most potential and do all the work.

According to Diamond Fields Intl, “all diamonds are created deep in the earth's crust at very high temperatures and under incredibly high pressure. As magma works its way to the surface through deep fractures it sometimes traps diamonds within it. The magma is very low in silica and after it erupts and cools, it forms Kimberlite or lamprolite rocks. The pipe or dyke represents the conduit that brought the diamonds to the surface. Kimberlite pipes are only found in ... areas of rock that are at least 2.5 billion years old. The first kimberlite pipe was discovered near the town of Kimberly, South Africa, hence the name.  Over the past 90 million years, research has shown that most of the drainage basins in the area have flowed from east to west and emptied into the Atlantic Ocean. This means that weathering, mostly from rain, has eroded diamonds out of kimberlite pipes and swept them into river systems. The diamonds were then carried out onto the delta system where the river meets the ocean. Initially, the diamonds were concentrated in small tidal channels on the river delta and in beaches near the delta. Constant wave and current action, however, later redistributed them up along the coast of Namibia.” How fortunate for the Namibians … and Namdeb.

In June 2002, the largest diamond, a 17.4 carat gem quality diamond, was recovered from the Lüderitz offshore concession by the mining vessel mv Namakwa. It was the largest diamond ever recovered by marine mining in the area. Marine diamonds are harder than their earth-mined counterparts and as many as 95% of the diamonds mined in this area are gem quality.

Though we could get close enough to the boats to take pictures, security is very tight. Locals tell us that the entire harbor and bay are under constant camera surveillance.

A sidebar ... Namdeb's motto is “On diamonds we build”. The DeBeers Group, the world's leading diamond company was founded in 1888 by Cecil Rhodes (think Rhodes Scholar) and is a 50% partner, along with the Namibian government, of Namdeb. DeBeers' famous slogan “A diamond is forever” has appeared in every De Beers engagement advertisement since 1948. In 1999, Advertising Age proclaimed it the slogan of the century!

Is it really August already? Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits.  We've been here in Luderitz a month now. Where has the time gone?

Sturmvogelbucht

An old whaling station

We drove with new friends, Doris and Ian, out to the Lüderitz peninsula again, but this time we headed up, down, over and around on bumpy 4x4 roads through the interior of the peninsula, then to the coastline for a closer look. Their knowledge of the area is outstanding and made for a fun, very informative day.

We visited Sturmvogelbucht (Storm Petrel Bay), an old whaling station used by British, American and Norwegian whalers from the late 18th to the early 20th century. They hunted for southern right and other whales  … 40 known whales species have been observed in the cold waters off the Namibian coast. There were at least five whaling stations along the coast between Luderitz and Walvis Bay at one time. In fact, Walvis Bay was named Walfisch Bay … Whale Bay … because of the plethora of whales which frequented it.

The dilapidated remains of the whaling station line the beach. Huge, rusting, old boilers used to process whale blubber are dug into the sand, playing their part in the landscape now. Bright red bricks from old buildings are strewn along the beach, mixed with rubble and shells, broken bottles and beach-goers' detritus.

The old slipway is still visible and imagining the whalers attaching their catch to an old anchor ring and winching the whale ashore was not difficult.

The bay was quite calm, but the water looked cold. Evidently, this is a reasonably good swimming beach except for the water temperature which is more amenable to local Cape fur seals and African penguins. The beach, so thick with shells, crunched loudly under our feet as we walked. It was low tide and we beachcombed as gulls and oystercatchers looked on. We found all sorts of treasures: sea glass, interesting limpet shells, white quartz stones smoothed by constant ocean tumbling. Doris and I filled our pockets with them (and the sand that clung to them) like little children, proud of our loot.

We closely  inspected an old whale bone, part of a skull from a humpback or a right whale, Ian figured. It was mounted on pedestal as monument to the whalers of days gone by. Whalebones are littered along the Namibian coastline also known as the Skeleton Coast. Here on the peninsula whale bones are now mostly the remains from whales that have been beached.

Life must have been hard here for the whalers, but obviously hardest for the whales that were hunted and slaughtered in great numbers. According to the Namibian Sun, in 1770, the southern right whale population was estimated to be between 55,000-70,000.  Between 1788 and 1803 alone, whalers visiting the Namibian coast are believed to have killed at least 3,700 Southern Right Whales, depleting the population. By the early 20th century, there were no longer right whales spotted in Namibian waters. Right whales (northern and southern) were so named, by the way, because they were the “right” whale to hunt. They were slow, easy to kill and they stayed afloat when dead.

Since the 1982 moratorium on whale-hunting, the whales have returned and now whale-watching instead of whale-hunting is the norm in Namibia. The first right whale calf observed in Namibian waters and thought to have been born here occurred in Luderitz Bay in 2009.

Stay tuned for more exploration of the Luderitz peninsula in the next day or two … we're talking porcupine quills, a crayfish feed, shark egg cases, scat and track identification (really!), geology lessons and Bushman's candles. Don't miss out … it's just a little further.

Lüderitz to become !Nami#nus - Really?

On changing a town's name

I get that the Europeans weren't the first people living in Africa … or North America or South America or Australia … and that when they arrived, they often “claimed” land that didn't belong to them and just moved in. That wasn't actually the case here in Lüderitz. Adolph Lüderitz legitimately bought the land from a local chief (who sold it twice, by the way) and staked his claim here. Then, diamonds were discovered and … well, I've already told you the rest of the story, so I won't repeat myself. After more than a century of the town having the name Lüderitz, it seems kind of unreasonable to change it to the original place name given it by local tribes centuries ago. I just read an article in Namibia's New Era newspaper that the Lüderitz Town Council has voted to do just that … change the name of Lüderitz to !Nami#nus.

I searched on line in vain to find out how to pronounce !Nami#nus, but I was unable to find a specific pronunciation for the proposed new name of the town.  The ! and the # represent click consonant sounds in Nama, a Khoekhoe language. I asked the locals how to pronounce it … no one was quite sure. So .. Welcome to “How do you pronounce this town's name?”

In Durban, South Africa, all the street names were changed a few year's ago to new names honoring famous black people. Maps now show the old name plus the new name, but most people, black and white, rarely remember what the new names are. If you ask for directions, they'll provide the old street names and you have to figure out what the new name is in order to figure out where you are and where you're going. I wonder how much it cost the city of Durban to change all those street signs to the new ones? And print new tourist maps? You wonder if all that money couldn't have been used towards a better end.

I understand that people want to reclaim their heritage and show respect to their heroes, but certainly there are less disruptive and more illustrious ways to show respect. Many townsfolk here, black and brown and white, are fighting the change. !Nami#nus translates to “surrounded or embraced by water” in the Nama language. Mispronunciation of the town's new name, if you ever figure out how to pronounce it in the first place, translates to a vulgar term for a part of the female anatomy. According to local knowledge, the Nama people were nomadic herdsmen and didn't actually have a town or village established here. They just passed through now and then with their cattle and established a geographical place name for it. Some claim the name change is meant to eradicate all evidence of colonialism. (Heck, if you're reading this, you were probably from a colonized country at some point or other.) Others feel the name change will help to secure more of the Nama vote. You have to wonder if changing a town's name has as much impact on their lives or their votes, as perhaps offering more educational or health benefits.

The townsfolk are requesting a referendum vote to determine whether or not the town's name will change. It's not clear whether this will come to pass. In the meantime, our blog site reflects our visit to Lüderitz, Namibia. It may be that at some point I'll have to change it to to “I can't pronounce it, but you spell it with lots of punctuation marks and we were there once”, Namibia.