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“After a transpacific journey of over 5,000 miles (8,047 kilometers), the Amadea has safely docked in a port within the United States, and will remain in the custody of the U.S. government, pending its anticipated forfeiture and sale,” the Department of Justice said in a statement.

The FBI linked the Amadea to the Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov, and the vessel became a target of Task Force KleptoCapture, launched in March to seize the assets of Russian oligarchs to put pressure on Russia to end the war in Ukraine.

The U.S. said Kerimov secretly bought the vessel last year through various shell companies.

The U.S. won a legal battle in Fiji to take the Cayman Islands-flagged superyacht earlier this month. The Amadea made a stop in Honolulu Harbor en route to the U.S. mainland.

“The successful seizure and transport of Amadea would not have been possible without extraordinary cooperation from our foreign partners in the global effort to enforce U.S. sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified war in Ukraine,” the Justice Department said.

Hyderabad: When Rakesh Kumar returned to his hostel on Thursday, he was taken aback to see a notice on the gate of his building.

“The hostel management requests its residents to vacate the premises within 24 hours,” it read, citing orders from municipal authorities.

Rakesh is not alone in his dilemma. Several other private hostels in the city, which host working employees and students, have been putting up notices, asking people to leave the premises immediately due to the coronavirus outbreak in the country.

Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao recently announced that all educational institutions, pubs and recreation places in the state would be shut till the end of March.

Urging companies to also practise social distancing, the government had appealed for employees to be provided work-from-home options. But not many IT companies have followed suit. The city hosts a significant population from various districts, particularly people who have moved here for work or educational purposes.

“How can they ask us to leave within 24 hours?” asked a distraught Sathwik, who is employed at a software company and hails from Nalgonda. “I do not even have a work-from-home option, so what am I supposed to do now?”

According to his hostel management, officials from the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) visited various hostels and issued an ultimatum to make alternate arrangements for the residents.

GHMC officials, however, denied any such orders.

“There was no official order issued from GHMC on this. We are looking after sanitisation and suggested that hostels should not be overcrowded, but said nothing on vacating or sending people away,” said Deputy Mayor Baba Fasiuddin.

The IT industry COVID-19 committee clarified that working hostels need not be shut. It said police helpline numbers were available and people could report such actions taken by hostel managements.

“It was pretty ironic — here I am on my day off, and I encounter this huge dead sea lion,” recalled David Slater, 32, about the first of what became six visits to grim yet haunting scene. “There was sadness, but also a certain nurturing beauty.”

Slater, who moved to Monterey from Hawaii five years ago, had his image “Sea Lion Fall” selected as the best photograph in the “Aquatic Life” category of the Academy’s BigPicture: Natural World Photography Competition . Established in 2014, the contest this year attracted more than 7,000 entrants. From these, just nine were selected to receive awards.

As someone who says he “has been obsessed with undersea photography since I was kid,” Slater was familiar with BigPicture. But he had never given thought to entering until real life intervened.

“Sea Lion Fall” was taken on the sixth and last dive that Slater took to survey the scene off Monterey’s San Carlos beach. With each visit, the sea lion remained on the ocean floor, face buried in the sand. With each visit, Slater saw more and more members of one species drawing sustenance from the remains of another.

By the last visit, two dozen bat stars of varying sizes and hues had attached themselves to the carcass, latched tight so that one of their two stomachs could use enzymes to break down the solid mass and make it digestible.

Slater knew the grisly technical details, since he has a marine biology degree from the University of Hawaii. But he also knew that he was encountering a rare glimpse of nature’s cycle of life. One made more solemn by a handful of sea lions hovering nearby, keeping watch but not intervening.

“Sea lions are pretty intelligent creatures, and I wondered if the one who had passed had belong to this rookery,” Slater said in a phone interview.

For his final visit to the fallen sea lion — in between shifts at Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula — Slater brought along the gear to take vivid images of the world beneath the water, including strobes to capture the true colors in the gauzy underseas setting. What he returned with has a calm and haunting surrealism — a still gray creature studded with colorful sea stars, while other sea lions were a dim chorus in the background.

“I knew the photo was special to me,” said Slater, who has an instagram account devoted to his off-hours passion. “But to have the judges agree? I literally don’t believe it.”

An exhibition of BigPicture’s seven winners and 42 runners-up will be held this fall beginning Sept. 30 at the Academy’s home in Golden Gate Park.

The full set of 49 prize-winning and finalist photos is at www.bigpicturecompetition.org/2022-winners .

John King is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected]