In the winter of 1979, 22-year-old dairy farmer Juha Taskinen went ice fishing with his friend, Mikko Sairanen, on southeastern Finland’s sprawling, serpentine Lake Saimaa. Between nibbles, Sairanen told Taskinen of his chance sighting the previous summer of a rare Saimaa ringed seal, sunning itself on a rock. Taskinen asked to be taken to the same location, when the weather warmed, to see the norppa, one of the world’s few freshwater seals, at the time seldom seen and rarely photographed. The following June, Taskinen, an amateur photographer, took his camera…
