For a brief moment each autumn, a blanket of spectacular color falls across Alaska.  The progression begins as the underbrush lights in a blaze of reds and orange and continues in the coming days as waves of yellow spread across the trees.  The moment seems so brief and magical as the color fades in only a few days.  While it lasts, nature seems wrapped in a colorful drape.  The explosion of color comes at time of year when animals are making essential preparations for the rapidly approaching brutality of the Alaskan winter. (more…)

In January of 2008, I had the great privilege to visit the Ecuadorian Amazon at the Napo Wildlife Center Eco-Lodge.  This unique lodge, nestled along the banks of Lake Anangu in the Yasunì National Park.  This park is an important UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and the largest tract of tropical rain forest in Ecuador. (more…)

The plains of Kenya’s Masai-Mara and Tanzania’s Serengeti attract enormous herds of grazers during the annual rainy season.  As the grazers move into these areas,  a great drama ensues with Africa’s great predators hunting the herds.  Spectacular storms often form the backdrop for these scenes.  In 2008 I visited these great African parks, following the southward migration of the wildebeests.  These are some of the storms that I witnessed on my journey. (more…)

The close presence of predators is a daily reality for many animals throughout the world. Humans have insulated themselves from this reality by building up cities and pushing predators back into smaller and smaller natural spaces. As a result, we have lost our sense of the natural order and we are shocked and angered when one of our own falls to a predator. However, during winter at Seal Island, this primal struggle between predator and prey is a simple daily reality that plays out in spectacular fashion every morning. (more…)

I have recently returned from Mexico where I had an opportunity to swim with and photograph the ocean’s fastest animal - the sailfish.  Once an exclusive encounter for only the most elite underwater photographers, more and more great photos are emerging from the spectacular bait balls that occur each year off Isla Mujeres, Mexico every January to March.  I was lucky to be invited along by Chris and Monique Fallows on this photographic expedition.  I have been planning to photograph sailfish for a few years.  Chris had been excited about the prospect since being shown footage by BBC photographers visiting Seal Island. (more…)

Each spring, the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary plays host a series of spectacular natural events as the cycle of birth and death plays out for its inhabitants.  Monterey Bay is a wide bay along the central coast of California, bisected by the largest and deepest submarine canyon in the Pacific.  This canyon draws deep pelagic water within a few miles of shore and generates the forces that lie at the base of these annual events.  The Monterey Canyon begins at Moss Landing, located at the middle of Monterey Bay and extends about 95 miles out into the Pacific Ocean ending in the Monterey Fan nearly 12 000 feet below the surface. (more…)

The year begins for a Kodiak bear deep below the Alaskan snow.  Within the den, a Kodiak bear spends the winter months in hibernation.  During these months, the hibernating bear does not eat, drink, defecate, or urinate.  As winter progresses, the bear’s body temperature drops slowly reaching a low of 12 ° C (21.6 ° F) below its normal active temperature.  Through some miraculous adaptations, the bear is able to minimize toxic waste products in its system by reabsorbing toxic protein breakdown products through the walls of the bladder and bowel and forming new tissue from these simple building blocks.  This biochemical marvel also mitigates much of the need for urination and keeps the bears body fluids in perfect balance through the cold winter months.  The bear’s heart rate also slows from a normal rate of 40 beats per minute to as little as eight beats per minute and then back to 40 for a short time each day due to spontaneous arousal mechanisms.  Oxygen consumption drops by 50% or more and carbon dioxide production decreases.  Somehow through these mechanisms the bear’s muscles do not waste; its bone remain mineralized and strong. (more…)

At up to 30 feet in length and weighing up to 10 tonnes, the intelligent and pack-hunting orca (or killer whale) is unrivaled as the ocean’s top predator.  Over the past million years, orca populations have subdivided into groups they may ultimately be designated as different species.  The most genetically separate group, known as the transients, appear to have diverged from other orcas about 700 000 years ago.  The transient orcas share much of the same range as the so-called residents along the west coast of North America. . While living in the same habitat, these groups have developed differences in social structure, anatomy, diet, and hunting strategy.   Resident orcas live in larger, life long groups of a mother and her generations of offspring.  These highly vocal orcas seem to feed entirely on fish.  Transient orcas on the other hand have a more fluid social structure and silently hunt primarily mammalian prey in smaller groups, vocalizing primarily after or between hunts.  Observations of the transients hunting and killing large whales provided the source for the common name “killer whale”. (more…)

For a cheetah on the Serengeti plains, life is hard.  These graceful predators are killed and displaced by larger predators and the odds of survival are heavily stacked against them.  As a result, the population density of cheetahs in the Serengeti is low.  Estimates in the 1990s put the number of cheetahs in the whole of the Serengeti at 500 to 900 individuals compared with about 2500 lions and 5000 spotted hyenas. (more…)

In April of 2008 I traveled to Monterey Bay, California in hopes of photographing transient orcas (also known as killer whales) hunting grey whale calves as they migrate with their mothers to northern waters. The mothers and calves must make this long and dangerous 7 000 mile journey to feed in the rich arctic waters after the calves are born in the warm but nutrient poor waters of Mexico during the winter months. Through much of the journey, grey whales remain in the relative safety of shallow near shore waters. However, the whales reach a point of particular vulnerability when they reach Monterey Bay with its deep and complex submarine canyon system. (more…)