POLAR OBSESSION 360 | National Geographic
Eleven years ago was my first trip to Antarctica. I came down here to do a story about the behavior of the leopard seal. My name is Paul Nicklin; it's my job as a photojournalist to capture the importance and the fragility of this place and bring this back to the world. Antarctica is a beautiful place, but it comes at a price. It's the getting there that's the hard part. We have to cross 550 miles of the roughest seas in the world. That's a 90-degree shift, constantly, 24 hours a day. But after four days of being confined to your bunk, it's like you're entering this dream line, and the dream is real.
What I love the most about Antarctica is that nothing is afraid of me. It is not a place where I feel lonely to be floating there in the water and then, like a ghost, a humpback whale comes cruising by, reaches out with a pectoral fin to see what I made of or what I'm doing in their waters. It's like coming back to see my old friend. And then to launch the zodiac and then to cruise alone amongst the icebergs, it's my homecoming in a land that you dream of when you're not there.
You're just a speck in this landscape of beauty. My only job at that point is creating these visuals that I can bring back to the world. I know there are leopard seals in the area, and the water, in a rare moment, is clear. I'm excited if there's a chance to meet a leopard seal in these conditions, but I'm also apprehensive by slipping below that curtain of the surface and looking underwater. I don't know what's gonna come and approach me. Every leopard seal is an individual.
They are a thousand pounds. They are twelve feet long. They are bigger than a grizzly bear. These leopard seals have never seen a human being in their hunting grounds before. The secret to any big wildlife predator is to let it dictate the encounter. They do these big dramatic threat displays, and I love it because, you know, they’re putting on a big show.
When curiosity overrides fear, at that point, you've got the seal, and the seal has you. In this case, I think the leopard seal became incredibly proud to show me how to catch a penguin, how to hold the penguin, and how to survive in this icy world. They are so smart; they want to communicate with you, and that's the beauty of these interactions is that these animals are trying to solve you.
You can watch in their eyes; it looks like they're smiling. They just love to have fun. I need to transport people into this world with the seal and to realize how beautiful it is and yet how fragile its ecosystem, where it lives, is. Their ecosystem is crumbling around them because of the lives that we're leading. The only chance it has for survival is us, as humans, changing our behaviors.