5 captivating images from National Geographic's Pictures of the Year

'Individually, these photographs speak to beauty, fragility, and wonder.' A sperm whale floats amid shards of polar pack ice, dead and decomposing, mouth hanging open. When photographer Roie Galitz captured the scene with a drone, the image was so arresting that it took a moment to notice the hungry female polar bear stretching her jaw to break through the whale's leathery skin. Galitz was leading a photography expedition along Norway's Svalbard archipelago when he spotted a blackened blob floating on the horizon. As the icebreaker drew close, he could see (and smell) that the blob was a massive decaying carcass releasing an occasional exhalation of noxious gas, like a big air cushion.