And Now for Something Completely Different: Mirounga leonina

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…