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Southern elephant seals are the largest of the seals, with adult males growing up to 5 meters long and 3 tons in weight. The are superb divers and spend much of their time at sea, but must come ashore to molt their fur and outer skin layers. When ashore they are highly social and love to wallow in meltwater puddles (turning them into reeking, polluted muckholes and earning these seals the unflattering but appropriate nickname of 'pig seals'). These were photographed near Palmer Station, on Anvers Island off the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. |
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