Rare Visuals of a Polar Bear on Top of a Dead Sperm Whale Among Nat Geo's Best Photos of 2025
Far away on the North Pole, at a latitude of about 82 degrees, the belly of a tawny-haired polar bear was growling with hunger. Everywhere around him was nothing but a blanketing layer of crisp, white snow. The bear’s gaze fell upon a giant dark object floating in a shard of polar pack ice, and it scrambled to reach the elongated object and started exploring it with its mouth. As it turned out, the object was the carcass of a male sperm whale, its mouth hanging open. The photograph, titled “Dinner on ice,” ended up getting featured in National Geographic’s “Pictures of the Year 2025” collection. The photo was captured by Roie Galitz (@roiegalitz).
Galitz came across this hypnotic scene while traveling in the Arctic Ocean, north of Svalbard, Norway, guided on a trip with Phototeva. In a behind-the-lens video, he shared that the scene was recorded in a Nikon Z9 and Nikon 600mm F4 TC. An aerial view of the scene, as captured in the winning photograph, reveals a blue-green pool of water enshrouded by fragments of broken sea ice. Drifting in this pool is the black-brown sperm whale, its intestines ripped by the female bear who is slouched on top of it, stretching its jaw, to break into its leathery flesh and have a bite.
“I had an idea of what to expect,” Galitz told National Geographic, “but I didn’t expect it to be that epic.” When he initially spotted the black blob floating on the horizon, he sensed that it was a dead sperm whale. The carcass, he noted, was easily identifiable by the noxious gases it was exhaling “like a big air cushion.” The sperm whale weighed nearly 40 tons while the bear sitting atop it weighed as much as 350 kilograms, Galitz described in an Instagram post.
But the encounter raised several questions in Galitz’s mind. “What was a sperm whale doing here? “It’s super rare,” he wondered. Typically, these whales don’t dwell in these cool waters, but with the Arctic’s waters warming up, he might have moved beyond his traditional range. Strong winds could have pushed him north, where he died from the cold or collision with a boat, a surprise feast for both the bear and Galitz. “You can see she’s trying to get in and get through, but the hide is just so thick,” said the photographer.
The following week, Galitz returned to the same location, but the whale was already gone. The hungry bear probably took the rest of the meal back home for her kids. Or did she hide it somewhere nearby? “It’s so unpredictable and fragile,” Galitz reflected. “A scene you saw today will probably not be there tomorrow.”
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