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Photo of the Day

October 04, 2006

Stromness Seals, South Georgia Island, 1998

Photograph by Maria Stenzel

Seals inhabit an abandoned whaling station on South Georgia's Stromness Bay. The whaling station was the only hope of survival for Ernest Shackleton and his crew who were trapped on ice floes for nine months over 800 miles (1287 kilometers) away from inhabited land.

(Text adapted from and photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Epic of Survival: Shackleton, " November 1998, National Geographic magazine.)