The Line Cutters

Naude Dreyer lifts the binoculars to his eyes and squints through the dim morning light toward the bottom of the point. A set of clean 3- to 4-foot waves uncoils down the peninsula of sand at Skeleton Bay. The forecasted swell was too small to attract the convoy of pilgrims who usually chase tubes to this desolate edge of the Namib Desert. Our only company out on the sand flats is the occasional jackal staring at us curiously from a distance.

But Dreyer’s focus is on the shoreline, not the waves. He puts the binoculars down and breaks into a sprint, followed by the thundering sound of thousands of seals at the waterline, frantically rushing toward the ocean. They bark and shout with teeth bared as he disappears into the maelstrom of animals, wielding a giant net. 

“Over here!” Dreyer shouts, above the roar of the stampede. The escaping seals give way, and he is left with his net flung over a huge bull. He struggles to restrain the animal as it drags him forward, and another two men rush in and help grab the net. They pull the seal up the beach, where Dreyer straddles the writhing animal and unsheathes a serrated blade. One of the other men carefully unzips the net, revealing a plastic packaging strap wrapped tightly around the seal’s neck, cutting deep into the flesh like a knife.

Dreyer uses the pick on his multitool to get some purchase on the entanglement as the seal jerks in pain, and then he cuts the strap. There’s an immediate release of pressure, and Dreyer gently removes the plastic noose, flecked with fur and bits of blood. The team moves quickly in unison. One holds the seal fast by its tail while another pulls the zip all the way down. Then Dreyer shouts for everybody to get back as he jumps off the bull, who rears up, pauses briefly to look at the men, then shrugs off the net, charges into the shorebreak, and swims off into deep water.

“He’s still very strong,” Dreyer says. “He’ll recover quickly, and the salt water is the best thing for the wound.” 

The team exchanges fist bumps as its members shake the sand off their nets. Then we jump into the bed of the pickup and move on to the next group of seals in the distance. 

Every day, Dreyer and his team work the 5-mile stretch of sand between Skeleton Bay and Pelican Point on the northern tip of the peninsula, looking for seals entangled in fishing line and plastic pollution. On average, they rescue five to 10 animals each morning, ranging from pups the size of a small dog to bulls that can weigh more than 500 pounds. Their record for a single outing is 34 rescues.

Near the rusted hull of an old shipwreck, the team spots another two entanglements among a large group of seals and executes back-to-back rescues with military-like precision. Their arsenal of tools includes customized nets, multitools, Teflon gloves, and GoPros. Communication is achieved via two-way radios and a series of hand signals they’ve developed specifically for catching seals. It’s a far cry from the towel and pocketknife that Dreyer started with when he began doing rescues over a decade ago.

By 11 a.m., the heat of the desert is rushing in at us, and the crew packs up for the day. “Once the land heats up,” explains Dreyer, “the seals move closer and closer to the water, and then it’s almost impossible to catch them.” 

*

Dreyer, 41, grew up in Walvis Bay, the town that sits directly opposite the sandspit that birthed Skeleton Bay.

“We used to come fishing here when I was in high school,” he says as we race past the shorebreak at the bottom of the point. “But the bay didn’t look like this at all. It was just a big hollow, and then this finger of sand grew and grew and closed up. We saw the potential, but nobody really fussed about it, so we just surfed it on our own until the hype started.”

When the wave burst into the limelight in the late 2000s, Dreyer’s local knowledge and decades of desert savvy were in high demand. He played guide and fixer for an entourage of the world’s best tube riders for a number of years. Over time, however, his focus shifted from the endless waves peeling down the point to the massive seal colonies that reside along the local shores.

Flanked by the Walvis Bay lagoon on one side and the raw Atlantic on the other, the peninsula is home to a plethora of birdlife, dolphins, whales, and thousands of seals. In 2012, Dreyer and his wife, Katja, started doing kayaking eco-tours along Pelican Point.

“About a year into it, I saw this seal pup with fishing line wrapped around its neck,” says Dreyer. “This thing was thin. It was in pain. So myself and one of the other guides ran after him. We tried to block him with a towel, then we tried to pin him down with a kayak paddle and put the towel over his head. We had no idea how to do it.” He laughs, recalling the clumsy attempt. “But it worked, and I managed to cut him loose with my old pocketknife.”

From that point on, Dreyer was constantly on the lookout for entangled animals. The more he looked, the more he found. He started to record the ad hoc rescues and post them on Instagram, where they quickly found an audience. 

“It became more and more of an obsession,” he says. “But I never thought it would lead to where we are now.”

We cut through the crimson-pink salt pans that flank the sandspit, past the saltworks with its towering white dunes, and find our way back onto the single-lane highway that runs north into Walvis Bay. Despite attracting a growing number of tourists, Walvis is still an industrial harbor town, surrounded by a series of suburbs that have been cleaved out of the desert into a neat grid of streets. We navigate the wide roads before finally pulling up at the Dreyer household, a single-story home in a quiet neighborhood.

Dreyer drives the truck onto a concrete ramp in the backyard, and one of the team starts rinsing the vehicle down with a high-pressure hose. Inside, the double garage is lined with tools, nets, and boxes filled with fishing line and other debris that’s been cut off of seals. Wetsuits hang from a board rack on the far wall, which also holds a collection of surfboards donated by high-profile pros. Taking pride of place is a weather-beaten orange net, which looks like a huge wind sock and has been patched up numerous times. Five years ago, a group of scientists from the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US saw what Dreyer was doing on Instagram and sent him the gear.  

“Getting that net was an absolute game-changer,” says Dreyer. “Before, we were limited to what we could catch by hand, which would be seals up to maybe 60 pounds. Suddenly we could catch much bigger animals, and it made the operation much safer. We get our nets custom made now, but that’s the OG.” 

We step inside the house, where Dreyer greets Katja warmly. Their three kids, Dylan, Nina, and Marley, crowd around the couple as they debrief on the morning rescues. 

Originally from Germany, Katja met Dreyer in South Africa while completing her master’s degree in political science at the University of Cape Town. The couple married soon after and moved back to Namibia. While Dreyer is at the forefront of the seal rescues, Katja is the driving force behind Ocean Conservation Namibia (OCN), the nonprofit she’s turned, with little more than a laptop, into a global organization. Their 2 million-plus subscribers on YouTube and support from crowdfunding platforms like Patreon have enabled them to focus on OCN full time since 2020, as well as employ four additional team members.

“We’re lucky seals are so cute,” says Katja. “When people see them, they want to know what’s going on with the rescues, and that allows us to get our real message across.”

Katja is the first to point out that seals are not endangered in Namibia, and she is forthright about their objectives as an organization.

“Whatever happens out there with the rescues, it’s much bigger than saving one seal’s life,” she says. “It’s about showcasing the horrible state of our oceans. It’s showing that one little piece of plastic nobody was concerned about ended up almost killing an animal.” 

When Dreyer first showed her videos of the impromptu rescues, Katja was shocked at how prolific the problem was but immediately saw the power of their appeal. 

“A lot of people are looking for a solution to the plastic crisis. They want to help fix it, but they don’t know how,” she says, pointing out that the scale of the problem often seems insurmountable and leaves one feeling more hopeless than before. “But with the rescue videos, it’s the opposite. You’re exposed to the problem and, in a short space of time, you see someone step in and do something, and you see a solution. That resonates with people. It’s a very powerful way to create awareness.” 

When COVID swept across the world in 2020 and shut down Namibia’s tourist economy, it motivated the Dreyers to focus on OCN full time. While Katja was putting in place the online strategy that would form the backbone of the organization, Dreyer was out on the sandspit every day, refining his technique. He was joined by Antoine Amory, a French surfer who’d been an officer for Sea Shepherd. When the vessel he was aboard docked in Walvis for refueling, Amory joined the Dreyers with the intention of staying a few days. He never left. 

“That’s when we really learned to do what we do,” says Dreyer. “Before, the rescues were always opportunistic. Now it was targeted, focused work, and we experimented with nets and hooks and crawling, jumping, driving.…We didn’t have a manual to follow, so we wrote our own.”

Soon, they developed a number of dynamic strategies to catch entangled seals—and avoid being bitten in the process.

“Seals are not aggressive animals by nature. They’ll always try to run past you. It’s only when you block them or try to pin them down that they get aggressive,” says Dreyer, who bears scars on his arms and legs as testament.

The team found that the majority of the entanglements it encounters come from fishing gear and shipping debris, followed by everyday plastic trash. The proximity of the harbor is a major contributing factor, but some of OCN’s most prolific rescues have been at Cape Cross, hundreds of miles away inside the remote Skeleton Coast National Park. Far from being confined to Namibia, evidence shows, the problem is pervasive across the globe.

According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), 12 million tons of plastic waste enter the oceans each year, 10 percent of which is lost or discarded fishing gear. A 2024 study found this includes more than 45,000 square miles of seine nets and 460,000 miles of monofilament fishing line—enough to reach the moon and back.

There are more grim statistics: The WWF estimates more than 100,000 whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals are killed by plastic debris each year. Other studies put the number at well over 300,000, since these fatalities are rarely seen. In most cases it’s a slow, agonizing death, where animals either starve or are asphyxiated by entanglements. 

“It’s the ultimate case of ‘out of sight, out of mind,’” says Katja. “But in this instance, the seals are bringing the problem to us. They’re showing us how bad the situation in our oceans really is.”

*

A heavy fog hangs over Pelican Point the following morning. Dreyer holds the wheel lightly, driving through the thick sand by instinct as much as by sight. Fog is a regular occurrence along the Skeleton Coast, where the sizzling desert butts up against a freezing ocean and condenses the air into a thick marine layer that can extend for miles inland. The extreme temperatures are just one of the reasons why the Skeleton Coast ranks among the most inhospitable regions on earth, prompting the indigenous San to first name it “the land God made in anger.”

But the desert also has bred miraculous innovation, like Stenocara gracilipes, or the Namib fog-catcher. This button-size beetle can be found marching up tall sand dunes along the coast each morning. When it reaches the crest of the dune, it pushes itself up on its front legs into a headstand. The fog soon condenses into drops of water along hydrophilic ridges on the beetle’s exoskeleton, which then trickle down into its mouth. It’s an elegant solution to an environment that receives less than half an inch of rain a year.

This scarcity on land lies in stark contrast to the abundance of the ocean. The cold Benguela Current and southerly trade winds routinely churn up nutrients and phytoplankton along the Namibian coast, creating a rich food chain that supports a plenitude of sea life, from microscopic critters to humpback whales. With no natural predators on land—save for the odd desert lion—and a ready supply of fish, large groups of Cape fur seals find these shores the ideal habitat. 

As we crawl along through the marine layer, there’s a thumping on the roof of the truck. Dreyer hits the brakes.

“We’ve got a potential target in that group over there,” Amory says, leaning into the window. 

Dreyer cuts the engine and we get out of the vehicle. We can barely make out the seals in the distance, but we can hear them. An otherworldly cacophony of bleating, barks, and deep, guttural bellows emanates from the fog. 

The team assembles its gear and decides to split into two pairs, approaching the seals from either side in a pincer-like movement. Dreyer and Amory get down on all fours and start crawling toward the colony while clutching their nets, which make a faint rasping sound in the sand. Then, with a near-imperceptible nod, they charge into the midst of the animals. Three seals are rescued—two with fishing line around their necks and another tangled in a plastic shopping bag. The last one almost gets away from Amory, but he chases it into the water and scoops it up with a small net.

“We’ll often run into a group to rescue a seal we spotted, and when we’re there, we see another and another,” he says. “It just makes you wonder how many we’re not seeing.”

Dreyer wrangles the biggest seal. He’s breathing hard when the rescue is over, but he’s visibly elated. 

“When you start to chase a big seal, it’s the exact same feeling you go through when you’re stroking into a wave that’s out of your comfort zone,” he says, walking back to the vehicle. “There’s a lot of adrenaline involved, because you just know it can go either way.”

For the next hour, the team expertly works the sandspit in the fog, notching up six rescues in total. Then Amory spots something unusual. It looks like two small seals tangled together, but when they rush up to the pups, one of them is already dead. The frightened pup tries to escape but can barely move with the weight of the other seal dragging behind it and the bundle of fishing line slicing into its neck. 

After cutting the surviving pup free, Dreyer dutifully vlogs the result of the rescue. “He’ll be fine,” he tells the camera “He ran off, and he can breathe freely again,” he adds, then places his hand gently on the dead pup. “But unfortunately this is the price animals pay for our negligence.” 

Everyone is silent on the drive back home as fatigue sets in. The work is arduous and physically exhausting, but it also exacts a heavy emotional toll. 

“It looks fun to run on the beach among seals, but it is a dangerous thing,” says Amory. “We have all been bitten, we get injured, we see things that are terrible.”

*

Over the past several years, OCN has worked closely with various scientific research groups, meticulously logging and uploading all the data they capture onto an open-source database. That data is now being used in research that helps inform science and policy on everything from fisheries management to animal welfare. They have also started consulting directly with the Namibian government and facilitate workshops around the world. A documentary I directed about their work, Cutting the Line, was recently presented at the United Nations Oceans Conference, which is working toward a treaty to curb plastic waste that will be legally binding across the globe. 

“Ultimately, we want to help take this to industry and governments, to change policies and prevent all these things from ending up in the ocean in the first place,” says Dreyer.   

Katja believes the most immediate and impactful change, however, comes from their audience. “We get messages all the time from all over the world, with people telling us how our videos have changed their behavior,” she says. “It’s easy to see the connection between the choices we make and what’s happening with the seals. You don’t need to have a seal colony in your backyard to do something about it.”

By the end of the week, the team has rescued more than 30 seals, freeing them from fishing line, plastic wrap, shopping bags, rope, and even a discarded baseball cap. During one rescue, they have to use bolt cutters to cut through a plastic spool wedged around a seal’s neck. 

The crowning achievement, however, is catching “Hulk,” a seal entangled in a green nylon net that Dreyer and Amory have been stalking for the past month at the Cape Cross Seal Reserve. 

Cape Cross extends for 2 miles into a deep bay and offers a series of left-hand pointbreaks. Unlike Skeleton Bay, it is a rocky peninsula, pockmarked with coves and boulders. When we arrive at the top of the headland, we see a wave spit and run for a hundred yards among what looks to be thick kelp—and then I realize it’s not kelp at all but hundreds of seals in the lineup.

“This is the biggest Cape fur seal colony in the world,” says Dreyer, pointing out that even if someone wanted to surf here, they can’t. Authorities banned water sports after a surfer was bitten in the face by a seal during mating season a few years back. Surfing is still allowed deeper in the bay, where the wave levels out over sand like a reverse Malibu and the colonies thin out considerably. But at the top of the point, they number in the thousands. 

“I’ve grown up close to the ocean, and it’s given me everything,” says Dreyer. “This is a way to try to give something back.”

Amory spots Hulk on a patch of rocks close to the water. He and Dreyer decide to approach from the side, hiding behind outcrops of boulders as they edge closer and closer until they burst into a sprint. Their target is directly in sight, but dozens of seals are blocking the way as they try to escape. Dreyer peels off into the shorebreak to intercept Hulk. He lunges with his net and nabs him in a clean shot just as he is starting to swim away, then drags him up the beach, where they cut him free from the net. The tally of seals for the day is seven. 

To date, OCN has collectively rescued more than 3,500 seals, a number that keeps growing as the team constantly refines its expertise.

After we pack up the truck, I ask Dreyer what motivates him to keep doing this day in and day out. He thinks for a while as he searches for an answer beyond trying to prevent the needless suffering of these animals or raising awareness around the plastic crisis.  

“I’ve grown up close to the ocean, and it’s given me everything,” he eventually replies. “I owe my livelihood and my whole existence to the sea, so this is a way to try to give something back.”

The desert slips past the window on the long drive back to Walvis Bay. The towering dunes stretch from deep inland, then melt into a flat expanse of sand that eventually spills into the ocean. Wherever one looks, there’s no end in sight.