ENTRY DESCRIPTION
Elephant seals are impressive marine mammals. Breeding males can weight close to 9,000 pounds, which makes them one of the largest living carnivores on earth. To get to that size and successfully defend their breeding rights, males need to gain fighting skills. And to do that, they spend years with their sparring partners, often siblings or close relatives, practicing the right moves. These practice fights can look quite serious and even inflict wounds on their opponents, but may be interrupted by tender moments like the one I captured in this image, which give away the playful nature of the interaction.

AUTHOR
I am an animal behavior scientist by training and a data scientist by profession, with a passion for nature and wildlife photography that I have nurtured since I was eight years old. My wildlife research and travels have taken me around the world for more than three decades. This life has offered me opportunities for photographing in some of the most fascinating environments, from the rainforests of Central America and East Africa to the Australian Outback and the sub-antarctic Falkland Islands and countless places in between. In 2023, I decided to pursue a plan to turn my passion for wildlife photography into a full-time career, with the ultimate goal of bringing people closer to nature through my art as well as hands-on photography workshops in some of my favorite locations around the world. My photography aims to portray the personalities, behavior, and emotional states of animals so that they become more than mere entries on a catalog of biodiversity, much of which we are set to loose without action.

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