Seals inhabit an abandoned whaling station on South Georgia's Stromness Bay. The whaling station on South Georgia was the only hope of survival for Ernest Shackleton and his crew who were trapped on ice floes for 9 months over 800 miles 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.)