National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen's YouTube video "Face-Off With a Deadly Predator," an account of his scary encounter with a leopard seal in the Antarctic, has been downloaded more than a million times.

In this subsequent video interview with NatGeo News Watch, below, Nicklen shares his thoughts about leopard seals--and other polar predators he has studied since he was a boy growing up in a small Inuit community in the Canadian Arctic.

He talks about the patience and time needed to make the photographs of polar predators for ten National Geographic Magazine articles and for his new National Geographic book, Polar Obsession.

A large female leopard seal greets photographer Göran Ehlmé. Anvers Island, Antarctica (p. 161 of Paul Nicklen's new book, Polar Obsession.)

A leopard seal feeds Paul Nicklen a penguin. Antarctic Peninsula (p. 36)

© 2009 Paul Nicklen/National Geographic

Growing up in the Arctic, Nicklen said, "We didn't have a television...telephone...radio...so all of my entertainment came in the form of playing outside, and that meant being around animals...seeing my first polar bear when I was five years old.

"So you really learn from the time you are young how these animals work, what makes them tick. You learn about social hierarchy, and then most of all, the best thing you learn is their connection to the ecosystem," he said.

Looking towards an uncertain future, a huge male bear triggers a camera trap, taking his own picture. Leifdefjorden, Spitsbergen, Norway (p.239)

© 2009 Paul Nicklen/National Geographic

All this information plus a college degree in marine biology taught Nicklen how to approach and get up close to animals, to use body language to communicate with them, and devote many hours to get them used to his presence before getting into the water with them.

A large bull walrus returns to the shores of Prins Karl Forland after diving and feeding on clams. Svalbard, Norway (p. 150)

© 2009 Paul Nicklen/National Geographic

What people don't realize when they see his pictures, Nicklen says, is the sometimes days, weeks or months he needed to get the animals to care less about his presence.

Narwhals dive deep under the ice to feed on Arctic cod, then return to the surface to breathe and raise their tusks high in the air. Lancaster Sound, Nunavut, Canada (p. 103)

© 2009 Paul Nicklen/National Geographic

"The narwhals story...a chapter in the book, took me 15 years to try to figure it out," Nicklen said. The project involved working with the Inuit, buying an ultralight plane, flying out to the remote pack ice in the Arctic, "and finally, in one day, getting all those images for that narwhal story. It's just time and patience."

© 2009 Paul Nicklen/National Geographic

Polar Obsession (National Geographic Books; November, 2009; $50; hardcover) is a showcase of Nicklen's best pictures and an opportunity for him to share important insights into animal behavior, the fragile polar environment and climate change that threatens the ice and its inhabitants.

In the Arctic spring, meltwater channels drain toward and down a seal hole, returning to the sea. (p. 71)

© 2009 Paul Nicklen/National Geographic

"The polar regions are disappearing quickly, and I want my photo essays to stand as a reminder of what is at stake. It is my mission to bring the rare, remote and threatened to caring people who can enjoy and help protect these lands and creatures," Nicklen writes in his introduction.

The book includes 150 of Nicklen's most spectacular images from the polar regions. Elephant seals, leopard seals, whales, walruses, narwhals, polar bears, penguins, albatrosses, petrels, arctic cod, and krill, are among the cast of characters he captures through his lens. To make these photos took many years of thinking and planning and sometimes many hours of waiting in difficult conditions for the right moment.

A kittiwake soars in front of a large iceberg. Svalbard, Norway (p. 29)

© 2009 Paul Nicklen/National Geographic

In essays introducing each chapter, Nicklen describes the ice fields, floes and frozen seas that are the backdrop to his images.

A young polar bear leaps between ice floes. Barents Sea, Svalbard, Norway (p.16). Click on the feature "Ice Paradise" for more photos from Nicklen's Svalbard assignment for National Geographic Magazine.

© 2009 Paul Nicklen/National Geographic

"Nicklen has risked his life many times in the 20 years he has been documenting the polar regions," says the National Geographic news release about this book. "He has crashed his ultralight airplane, fallen through the sea ice, been lost in blizzards, bitten by fur seals, attacked by a walrus and an 8,000-pound elephant seal, charged by a grizzly bear and sniffed through the thin fabric wall of a tent by a polar bear."

A gentoo penguin chick peeks, checking for patrolling leopard seals before tempting fate. Port Lockroy, Antarctic Peninsula (p. 166)

© 2009 Paul Nicklen/National Geographic

"If I really want people to care about polar species, my images have to be wild and raw," he writes. "I want people to feel what it's like to be in the water, swimming three feet from a polar bear. I want them to experience what it's like to be offered a penguin as food by a leopard seal. Only then will they really care about that habitat and that species."

Paul Nicklen emerges numb from the cold after an hour under the ice. Admiralty Inlet, Nunavut, Canada (p. 15)

© 2009 Paul Nicklen/National Geographic

Mother bear and two-year-old cub drift on glacier ice. Hudson Strait, Nunavut, Canada (p. 77)

© 2009 Paul Nicklen/National Geographic

Included in the book is a gear list detailing the enormous amount of equipment that accompanies Nicklen on his assignments, "likely more equipment than any other natural history photographer on the planet," because Nicklen shoots above and below water.

He usually travels with 14 to 20 cases and hockey duffel bags weighing between 60 pounds and 70 pounds each. "Getting to and from location with all the gear is often the worst and hardest part of the assignment," he writes. A list of some of the equipment Nicklen is currently using can also be found on his Web site.

Paul Nicklen on assignment. Lewes Lake, Yukon Territory, Canada. (not in book)

© 2009 Paul Nicklen/National Geographic

Albatrosses, penguins, seals, and killer whales are among the charismatic species that will benefit from South Africa's declaration of a vast new marine protected area in the Southern Ocean.

At 70,000 square miles (180,000 square kilometers), the Prince Edward Islands Marine Protected Area will be the fourth largest ocean preserve on the planet. Only the protected zones around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Great Barrier Reef, and Phoenix Islands are larger.

The Oklahoma-size territory that South Africa is adding to Earth's protected marine areas is a haven for millions of birds, mammals, and other marine animals being squeezed out of safe places to feed and breed as overfishing and climate change impact their traditional range in the Southern Ocean.

Antartic fur seal photo courtesy Fritz Pölking/WWF South Africa

The announcement by South Africa's Environmental Affairs Minister, Christoffel Johannes van Schalkwyk, came after many years of close cooperation between the South African government and WWF, a multinational conservation organization with world headquarters in Switzerland.

"South Africa's declaration to establish one of the world's largest marine protected areas around its Prince Edward Islands is a marine conservation achievement of global importance that will help protect a suite of spectacular wildlife," WWF said.

Penguin colony photo courtesy Sam Petersen/WWF South Africa

The new conservation zone around the Prince Edward and Marion Islands is almost 800 miles (2,000 kilometers) south of South Africa in the Southern Ocean (see map below), and forms an important global biodiversity hotspot, which was subject to rampant poaching during the late 1990s, WWF said.

"This is a historic day in marine conservation in South Africa," said Deon Nel, head of the WWF Sanlam Living Waters Partnership, a collaboration between WWF and Sanlam, a leading financial services group in South Africa. "All of South Africa's current marine protected areas are located very close inshore. The commitment of the first large offshore marine protected area moves South Africa into a new era of marine conservation."

The Prince Edward Islands are among the world's most important and diverse regions, WWF added. "But the islands, home to albatrosses, penguins and killer whales, have been threatened by illegal and irresponsible fishing practices in the past. The illegal fishing vessels around the Prince Edward Islands were targeting Patagonian toothfish. And the albatross species were killed as bycatch in these operations," the conservation charity said in a news statement.

Grey-headed albatross photo courtesy Sam Petersen/WWF South Africa

Given the scarcity of land masses in the Southern Ocean, sub-Antarctic islands contain vast populations of seals and seabirds, which use these islands to breed and molt and are therefore critical to the conservation of such species, WWF added.

Prince Edward Islands support 450,000 king penguins and 750,000 macaroni penguins. An estimated 5 percent of the world's southern rockhopper penguins also live there, as does a small population of about 3,000 gentoos.

Other birds colonizing the islands include 7,300 wandering albatrosses (44 percent of the total world population), 21,800 grey-headed albatrosses (the albatrosses in the two pictures above), 15,000 Indian yellow-nosed albatrosses (22 percent of the world population), 4,400 dark-mantled albatrosses, and a small population of 700 light-mantled sooty albatrosses.

Photo of gentoo penguins courtesy Kevin Shafer/WWF South Africa

Among the marine mammals raising their young on the islands are 16,000 sub-Antarctic fur seals (a third of the world's population), 760 Antarctic fur seals, and 1,800 southern elephant seals.

Said WWF International's Jim Leape, "South Africa plays a key role with several other countries, including Australia, France and New Zealand, in protecting the amazing biodiversity and commercially important fisheries of the sub-Antarctic and, through this, helps to establish a fully representative, viable and effective marine protected area network for the Southern Ocean."

National Geographic News related stories:

Extinction Near for Albatross, Experts Warn

Antarctic Wildlife at Risk From Overfishing, Experts Say

King Penguins Declining Due to Global Warming

Southern elephant seals photo courtesy Michel Gunther/WWF South Africa

Illustration of Titanoboa cerrejonensis by Jason Bourque/ Released by Nature

The biggest snake that ever lived (that we know about) was a massive anaconda-like beast that slithered through steamy tropical rainforests about 60 million years ago feasting on primitive crocodiles, National Geographic News reported today.

"Fossils discovered in northeastern Colombia's Cerrejon coal mine indicate the reptile was at least 42 feet (13 meters) long and weighed 2,500 pounds (1,135 kilograms)," contributor John Roach reported.

The snake would have killed its prey by slow suffocation -- wrapping around it and squeezing, just like a modern python or boa. Only this snake was twice the size of today's largest constrictors.

Humans would stand no chance against one of these giant snakes, said Hans-Dieter Sues, paleontologist and associate director for research and collections at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. "Given the sheer size, the sheer cross section of that snake, it would be probably like one of those devices they use to crush old cars in a junkyard."

Precloacal vertebra of an adult Green Anaconda dwarfed by a vertebra of the giant boid snake Titanoboa cerrejonensis (photo credit Kenneth Krysko) and (lower photo) comparison of a vertebra of Titanoboa with the body of a live Python regius (photo credit Jason Head)