Our team reached Panjin in Liaoning province in April 2009. Although it was still chilly this time of year, the ice at the mouth of the Shuangtaizi River was already melting; tons of sediment were flowing like slurry in the river. On a river bank some ten kilometers from the river mouth, close to a hundred spotted seals (Phoca largha) were basking lazily in the sun.

A few hundred meters away was a makeshift hut—a station from which to observe the seals, and the abode of a few lonely staff from the local fishery administration.

“This station’s quite posh!” exclaimed our photographer Xu Jian. This was his third time here. On his first visit in 2002, there was no observation station; he was free to roam around the area on a boat with Han Jiabo, an expert from the Liaoning Marine Fisheries Research Institute. On Xu’s second visit, an outpost station had been set up, but it was really a leased house from a local fishermen, and was very far upstream from where the seals were. Now, in the midst of a wilderness overgrown with reed, was a station with its own electricity, a cooking stove and a heated bed. This was heaven.