In Namibia, a group of desert lions have left their traditional hunting grounds for the Atlantic coast, to become the world's only maritime lions. One photographer captured this dramatic change in behaviour.

It is an incredibly striking photo: a lioness gazes into the distance on a pebbled beach in Namibia as tempestuous waves crash in the background. She guards her prey, just out of view – the carcass of a Cape fur seal.

Belgian photographer Griet Van Malderen captured this dramatic shot of Gamma, one of Namibia's desert lions who has learned to hunt seals to survive in the harsh environment of the Skeleton Coast. Her photo was highly commended at the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, run by the Natural History Museum in London.

"She was guarding the seal all day," Van Malderen says, who spent days waiting to capture the shot, watching Gamma from her car. "It's really amazing to see how their behaviour is starting to change."

There are just 12 desert lions living along the Skeleton Coast, out of a total population of around 80 in Namibia. They have moved from the arid Namib Desert to the Atlantic Ocean in search of food, drastically changing their diet and behaviour in 2017 to adapt to this new habitat – and appearing to thrive from the change.

"The photo shows how resilient these animals are… that they change their habitat to survive," says Van Malderen. "These lions are tough. Life is about survival and everything is a struggle."

Van Malderen has watched Gamma grow up, first encountering the lioness when she was three months old. She is now three-and-a-half years, "almost an adult," she says, adding that the lioness has become a fearsome hunter capable of killing 40 seals in a single night.

Gamma is a member of the first generation of lions to have grown up on the Skeleton Coast, says Philip Stander, a conservation expert who has been tracking Namibia's desert lions since 1980. He says Van Malderen's photo is "really significant" as it shows Gamma's "first day alone on the beach".

Namibia's desert lions used to live along the Skeleton Coast in the 1980s but retreated to the desert after a drought and conflict with farmers wiped out most of the population, says Stander. More than 30 years later, the animals "have found their way back to the coast", he says.

These animals have adapted to live in "the most inhospitable terrain you can imagine, a huge sea of sand dunes, with no vegetation", says Stander, who founded the non-profit Desert Lion Conservation Trust in 1997.

"The desert lions are incredibly unique," says Stander. They........

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