River Otters

A family of smooth-coated otters

Smooth-coated otters live in family groups and do almost everything together, which makes them one of the most entertaining animals to watch on an Indian river and one of the hardest to photograph: they are fast, low in the water and rarely still.

These frames, made over several seasons, add up to a day in the life of one such family: crossing the river in a line at dawn, heads up in the current to look at the photographer, fishing in the rapids, standing upright as sentries in the grass, and finally rolling themselves dry on a sandy bank.