HAPPY NEW YEAR 2008 - Photo of the Day 95

Jellyfish, Alaska, 1998

Photograph by Michael Melford

Jellyfish drift in the frigid waters of Alaska's Inside Passage. These waters flow through Tongass National Forest—a rich, shadowy, complex place fecund with life. Among its riches: thick carpets of mosses and ferns, streams jet-black with salmon, more bald eagles and brown bears than anywhere else in North America, and trees that can live for 500 years and reach 225 feet (69 meters) into the sky.

(Text from and photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "A Wilder Passage," May/June 1999, National Geographic Traveler magazine)