The Steller's sea eagle is one the world's most spectacular looking birds. Black, except for white stripes on its tail legs and wings, it is slightly larger than the American bald eagle, with a wingspan of up three meters, a body length of one meter, and weighing between 5.5 and 9 kilograms. They often look bigger because they often fluff up their feathers for better insulation. Steller's sea eagle are named after George Steller, a German naturalist who explored the Kamchatka in the 1740s. They have been carefully studied by Russian biologist Alexander Ladygin.

Inhabiting the frigid coastal waters off of eastern Russia and Hokkaido, Japan, they gather in the winter at Nemuro Channel to feast on small fish known as o-washi in Japan, sometimes resting on platforms of sea ice. About 6,000 to 7,000 Stellers' Sea Eagles remain, with about 2,000 gathering to feed off the northeast coast Hokkaido in the winter. Many follow fishing boats or gather in the morning near fishermen to collect leftovers.

Hundreds of Steller's sea eagles gather at Lake Kurilskoye on the Kamchatka Peninsula of eastern Russia in the winter. They spend most of their time perched in the trees and come to life during the winter sockeye salmon run, the largest in Asia. Steller's sea eagles sometimes have such difficulty finding in food in winter they starve but those that gather around Lake Kurilskoye sometimes are so gorged with fish they can't fly and naturalist have caught them by hand. [Source: Klaus Nigge, National Geographic, March 1999]

Steller's sea eagle's nest only in eastern Russia, in remote places like the island of Bolshoy Shantar. Nigge wrote: "Each spring eagles return to the same nest with the same partner. Favorite branches on lookout trees—ones with the best views of their nest and fishing spots—are rubbed bare by sentry duty."