Captions: Fur seal pups take cover in the high tussock grass where there is more protection from the aggressive males staking out the beach during breeding season. The males are not always careful around the pups when they are fighting. And there are lots of other babies to play with.
Baby fur seals don't have many predators to fear on South Georgia Island. The skuas and petrels typically leave them alone. And they have lots of friends in the tall grass when their moms are out fishing or napping nearby.
The tall grass is alive with the plaintive cries of the baby seals calling for their moms. This is how the babies reunite with their moms when they return to the island. Their little angry growls are adorable, too.
Baby fur seals are born days apart during breeding season. The little babies stay together in creches while their parents are away.
The little pups have outsized bobbleheads that they can't quite control yet. So their heads are always lolling to one side or the other.
About one in 800 baby seals is blonde or leucistic. We saw two blonde pups and a couple blonde adults on the islands.
These baby seals were so cute. They spend time getting used to the water by playing in the shallow glacial creeks.
Baby seals nap in the tussocks away from the beach where the adult males are waging war on South Georgia Island.
The mountainous scenery is amazing. The fur seals gathered along the glacial creeks.
The baby fur seals are mostly helpless, which is why it pays to put up a good front. There is safety in numbers in the tussock grass.
There is poetic justice seeing the fur seals flourish in the wreckage of the former industrial killing grounds that nearly hunted them to extinction.
Today, the babies grow up in the shadows of the derelict factories that used to turn them into commodities.
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