80 Degrees North

80 DEGREES NORTH
Svalbard, Norway – 2019

From where this large bearded seal is sitting on his own block of frozen sea ice, it is only about 500 miles to the North Pole. I rarely make it farther north than here, but if I do, it is always in this stretch of water. It is not at all easy to get this close to these bizarre-looking creatures. Far more often than not, they will slip into the water at any hint of something abnormal in front of them. It is not as if that many vessels make their way this
far north when the sea ice is still so dense, so I doubt he had huge familiarity with the object invading his personal space.

Much of the credit therefore goes to Bengt Wiman, the captain of the Swedish-owned boat The Freya, for showing great skill in moving the
ship cautiously toward the seal in tiny movements over a period of at least 20 minutes. The narrower the distance between the boat and the subject,
the greater the detail in the portrait. At any stage, the image could have been lost. I never anticipated the ship getting as close as it did. The Freya
is a practical boat to work from in circumstances such as these, as the lowest deck is really not much higher than the ice. I have an aversion to pointing the camera too far down.

Seals don’t tend to elicit as much emotion as other marine mammals; they are not perhaps alpha enough. This species, however, is probably
the most decorative of seal families due to the size of the whiskers and the permanent doleful expression.
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