South Sawyer Glacier Harbor Seal 1

When I visited Tracy Arm a few weeks ago, I was dismayed to see the decrease in ice from my previous visits. My 2007 images of the harbor seals took place near the North Sawyer Glacier which has drastically retreated and is now almost out of the water. In the past, I could not get anywhere near the South Sawyer Glacier, but this time I was able to even though it was calving huge pieces of ice. There were hundreds of harbor seals resting on the ice flows, but they were very skittish, thus difficult to photograph. I have spent enough time photographing wildlife that I am very conservative about approaching any animal. Harbor seals see my red inflatable coming from several hundred yards away and typically decide that they don’t want anything to do with me. Fortunately, I found this one critter that was not disturbed by my presence. In fact, this seal was so unconcerned, that it barely opened its eyes to look at me and repeatedly turned its back so that it could go back to sleep. I really appreciate the moment I captured in this image of the seal blissfully resting in its environment, unconcerned about the guy in the red boat with the big telephoto lens going click-click-click.