Paul Nicklen and the Leopard Seal That Fed Him Penguins in Antarctica

In 2006, on assignment for National Geographic off the Antarctic Peninsula, Canadian photographer Paul Nicklen slipped into the water beside a huge female leopard seal. She opened her jaws around his camera, then spent the next four days bringing him penguins, live ones first and then dead ones, as if trying to teach a hopeless hunter to feed himself.

Who is Paul Nicklen?

Nicklen was born in Tisdale, Saskatchewan, and grew up on Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, where his was one of only four non-Inuit families in a small Inuit community. He trained as a marine biologist at the University of Victoria before turning to photography and film.

He has published eleven stories for National Geographic magazine and won the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year award in 2012, along with several World Press Photo prizes. In 2014 he co-founded the ocean conservation group SeaLegacy with photographer Cristina Mittermeier.

The leopard seal encounter in Antarctica

Nicklen and his Swedish guide Göran, a friend and leopard seal expert, were cruising among icebergs in an inflatable Zodiac when Göran spotted a large female attacking a penguin. She slammed it against the underside of their boat. Göran said it was time to get in. Nicklen, in a dry suit and frightened, followed.

The seal, whose head Nicklen described as "larger than a grizzly bear's", charged with her jaws wide open and took his camera, and his head, into her mouth. Then her mood changed from threatening to curious. Nicklen thought she was studying her own reflection in the dome of his camera housing.

Watch Nicklen tell the story in National Geographic's video Face-Off With a Deadly Predator.

The penguin offerings

What happened next made the story famous. Over four days of diving, the seal repeatedly brought penguins to Nicklen and pushed them towards his camera. At first they were alive, and when he did not catch them, she brought dead and partly eaten ones. He kept declining, and she seemed increasingly dejected.

"I had come to photograph a supposed killer. Instead, I found a determined caretaker," Nicklen wrote. He has called leopard seals "the most incredible animals I've ever had the pleasure of photographing", and the experience turned him into an advocate for Antarctica and its wildlife. He returned to the Antarctic Peninsula in 2017 with Mittermeier.

Leopard seal facts

The leopard seal (Hydrurga leptonyx) is a large predatory seal of the Southern Ocean. According to the Australian Antarctic Program:

• Size: females are slightly larger than males, averaging about 3.0 m and 370 kg against 2.8 m and 320 kg. Big females can exceed 3.5 m and 500 kg.
• Range: solitary animals of the pack ice around Antarctica; they also wander north, with sightings as far as Tasmania.
• Diet: almost anything, including penguins, fish, squid, crustaceans and the pups of other seals. Individual seals have their own preferences: some patrol penguin colonies, others target crabeater seal pups.
• Hunting: they seize penguins in the water and thrash them until the skin peels away.
• Lifespan and predators: 26 years or more; the killer whale is their only regular natural predator.
• Status: least concern.

Respecting a powerful predator

Nicklen's seal was gentle, but leopard seals are apex predators. In 2003 a leopard seal drowned a scientist in Antarctica by dragging her below the surface. Treat them with respect: in the water, close encounters belong to experienced divers working with expert guides, and visitors on Antarctic cruises enjoy them best from the deck or a Zodiac.

More cold-water wildlife encounters: an elephant seal approaching a photographer and penguins at Neko Harbour.

Related reading

• Charlie and the Seal: An Antarctic Camera Encounter
• Gordon Buchanan’s Close Encounter with a Polar Bear
• An Injured Dolphin Approached this Diver for Help. Then This Happened

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