Hey there y’all! 🙂

Hope everyone is doing fine, easing into Fall.

I am still under the gun at work, but hopeful that things will go back to quasi-normal sooner rather than later. Bear with me a little longer, if you will…

To start off your week with a… big yawn, here is an image of a Steller sea lion (Eumetopias jubatus) that I took while visiting the beautiful Kodiak Archipelago in Alaska.

Steller sea lions are the largest otariids and the fourth largest pinniped. They are sexually dimorphic, with adult males weighing three times as much, and growing 20–25% longer than, adult females. Steller sea lions feed on fish and invertebrates.

From a conservation standpoint, Steller sea lions experienced a dramatic and unexplained population decline of about 70% between the late 1970s and the 1990s, with the steepest decline occurring between 1985 and 1989, when the population was reduced by 15% per year. The population reached its low point in approximately year 2000 and has shown an overall annual increase of 1.5–2% since then, which has been enough to make the species move from Endangered to Near Threatened status in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Nature history and conservation information source for Steller sea lions: the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

If you would like to see more images of mine, feel free to browse my Galleries.

As per my copyright notice, please respect my work and do not download, reproduce or use the image above without first seeking my consent. Thank you