And Now for Something Completely Different: Mirounga leonina

An excellent article.

Wickersham's Conscience

Gold Harbor, South Georgia Island, Southern Ocean

All of the Southern Ocean’s South Georgia Island is spectacular, but Gold Harbor, near the southeastern end of the 106-mile long sub-Antarctic Island is a stunner. With the hanging icefall of Bertrab Glacier looming over the long arc of the gravel-shored bay, Gold Harbor teems with wildlife. Southern Fur Seals, like those in the foreground here, some 25,000 pair of breeding King Penguins, a small colony of 300 or so pairs of Gentoo Penguins, even an endemic pipit species; as well as the star of the show. Those would be the largest member of the seal family, the largest carnivore that isn’t a cetacean and an animal so incredibly homely that they are pretty cute. They can fart continuously for a stopwatch-measured 45 seconds and likely belch even longer. They are Southern Elephant Seals, Mirounga leonine, and WC got to spend some…

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