21 Stunning Photos of Marine Life That Won Awards

1. Waiting for the Kiss: 2nd Place, Cold Water. On a previous visit to this lake, I had noticed the very colorful water lilies striving for the surface in the rising spring temperature. When I returned, I hoped to get a shot of a pike between the beautiful leaves. I instead ended up in the middle of mating common toads, and this guy made a short stopover before continuing his hunt for a female. Photographed in Halland, Sweden.

2. Pardon: Honorable Mention, Compact Wide Angle. Photograph shot near Vava'u Island, Tonga.

3. I Am Shy: Honorable Mention, Compact Macro. I took this photo during my first visit to Lembeh Strait, when I had just started to go a bit deeper into underwater macrophotography. Actually, I had not seen a conch snail before and I was fascinated by the cautious but also curious way it was looking at me. I tried to get a front shot with both eyes in focus. I had to move very carefully to not disturb the conch snail and finally got a shot of it looking back at me like it was trying to say, "I am just shy."

4. The Beast of Koh Tao: Honorable Mention, Compact Wide Angle. Koh Tao's beloved HTMS Sattakut might just be the most dived wreck in the world, but I can almost guarantee that only about 1 percent of these divers have ever seen it in conditions like this. Resting at depths between 27 and 30 meters, with a length of 49 meters and a width of 7 meters, you realize just how much of a beast the ex-Navy ship truly is when you have visibility beyond its average of 5 meters.

5. Attitude: 2nd Place, Blackwater. This tiny larval swordfish almost seems to know that it will grow into one of the fiercest predators in the ocean. If it reaches adulthood it can easily grow to 10 feet in length and become one of the fastest fish in the ocean. The tiny larvae can be found fairly consistently during blackwater dives off the coast of Florida and, even at these small sizes, they can appear to show an attitude as they snap their bills menacingly.

6. Cathedral of Kelp: 1st Place, Cold Water. Blue rockfish and giant kelp are two species more or less guaranteed at Monastery Beach, California—that is if the conditions allow you to dive this site. The orientation of the beach leaves it fairly exposed to incoming swells from the open ocean, often making it difficult or impossible to dive safely. Many days, when diving can be done safely, thick coastal fog blocks out the sun almost entirely, and nutrient-rich upwellings reduce visibility to just a few feet and cast a green haze into the water. On rare occasions, the stars align at Monastery Beach, providing calm seas, outstanding visibility, and cathedral-like beams of intense light that pierce through the kelp canopy.

7. Maculata: Honorable Mention, Nudibranchs. Monterey Bay has many fascinating species of nudibranchs though many of them are difficult to find or living on an unphotogenic substrate. Early into a critter hunt dive, I came across this Triopha maculata (nudibranch) searching a blade of kelp for the bryozoans that it feeds on. I decided to just wait and watch it for a while. After a few minutes passed, the nudibranch approached the near edge of the kelp and moved into a perched-like pose.

8. Acanthonus Armatus: 1st Place, Blackwater. One of the most highly sought-after blackwater subjects off the coast of Florida is the incredibly beautiful larvae of Acanthonus armatus. This fish is a bathypelagic species of cusk-eel found in tropical and subtropical waters. Even though the rather dull-looking adults live very deep, the younger fish can occasionally be found in shallower waters and are much more exotic in their appearance, with stunning filaments extending from their bodies.

9. The Push: 3rd Place, Cold Water. We took a small boat up into a frigid mountain stream off Port Fidalgo, Alaska, with the express purpose of photographing salmon. A small pool at the base of a waterfall was packed with large chum salmon on their way upstream to spawn. The big males are wound up with all sorts of sexual aggression, and this individual must have caught his reflection in my port and made a lightning fast strike. It clamped down on the shade of my lens, mercifully stopping it from dragging its gnarly teeth down the glass.

10. The Eyes Have It: 4th Place, Portrait. This bay scallop was lying on the bottom of a shallow cove in Fort Wetherill State Park, Rhode Island. Seen from the top, this scallop looked like one of many bivalves—relatively indistinguishable from the gray-brown bottom muck characteristic of this site. That is, until my dive light caught its blue eyes. Risking a complete silt-out, I lowered myself as much as possible in the water to settle level with the scallop. Seeing it through my viewfinder, and capturing the image using an optical snoot to enhance texture and depth, this benign (and tasty) creature looked more like a thing from my nightmares.

11. Alone: 2nd Place, Compact Wide Angle. This shot was captured on my first-ever dive at South West Rocks, where we visited the famous Fish Rock Cave—arguably one of Australia's best dive sites. The cave opened up to this breathtaking scene of crystal-clear blue water at the aquarium. Usually this area is populated by dozens of gray nurse sharks swimming around, but this particular autumn day, there was only one shark swimming solo. I hung around for 10 minutes near the rocks at the bottom of the cave right at the opening, careful not to disturb any wobbegongs, and snapped away as the lone shark swam back and forth among the three different schools of fish.

12. Never Smile at a Crocodile: Honorable Mention, Portrait. In March 2020, I was able to spend time in the water with this endangered saltwater crocodile in the marine reserve of Jardins de la Reina, with its pristine reefs and mangroves. I had intense feelings of excitement and fear, being faced with this majestic and unpredictable apex predator. We were instructed to enter the water gently, keeping eye contact with the crocodile at all times, keeping hands on our camera housing as a barrier. The crocodiles are very territorial and move quickly to fight off other crocodiles entering the area, as I witnessed during my brief time in the water.

13. Queen of Sistiana: 2nd Place, Nudibranchs. The title of the picture aims to explain the role of Chromodoris luterosea, which embodies the diving site where it was captured: a unique location in the northern part of the Adriatic Sea, which is akin to a Mediterranean version of Lembeh Island thanks to its extraordinary biodiversity, including more than a hundred species of different nudibranchs that are found in this ecosystem throughout the year.

14. The Last Moments of a Sperm Whale: Honorable Mention, Underwater Conversation. It was a very sad moment when we saw this sperm whale totally covered by a ghost net. The whale was trying hard to breathe, and when I approached swimming, trying to see if there was any way to help, I realized It was really difficult to do anything. After a few seconds the animal went down and a strong wind and waves forced us to leave that place. The animal wasn't found again despite the efforts of many people and authorities.

15. A Mother's Watchful Eye: 2nd Place, Marine Life Behavior. I recently spent some time diving around Bass Point in Shellharbour, around one and half hours south of my home in Sydney. There are a number of small dive sites around the reserve that showcase the beauty of the cool-water temperate reefs. In particular, there is a nursery site for numerous species, including the gloomy octopus, the Octopus tetricus. After mating, the female octopus finds a suitable den to lay her fertilized eggs in, tucking herself into a crevice. She will then spend the rest of her life meticulously caring for her brood. Her festoons of eggs are attached to the top of a rock crevice and the new mother will continuously pump water to oxygenate and clean them. After months of care, the planktonic young emerge from the safety of their mother's watch, ready to explore the big blue.

16. 5 Baby Seahorses: 1st Place, Compact Macro. I dive regularly beneath Blairgowrie Pier (in Melbourne, Australia) and never realized what tiny treasures floated far above my head, just beneath the surface. Baby seahorses sharing the same leaf or broken piece of seagrass or seaweed (to move around on for safety in numbers against fish and bird predators) take great patience to photograph. It is difficult to capture them all facing in the same direction since they are constantly squirming, as they move through the water together.

17. Soulmates: Honorable Mention, Macro. Coral hermit crabs live in coral. I found these two hermit crabs living side by side very close to each other. One was so shy that I kept quietly waiting for him to come out. Photographed off the Kerama islands, Okinawa, Japan.

18. The Day of the Tentacle: Best of Show winner, and 1st Place, Wide Angle. On the day of the photo, I remained in the tide pool as the tide was too low to venture outside of its boundaries. In one of the shallowest parts of the pool, I noticed an octopus. I placed my camera near its den and the octopus started interacting with it. It came completely out of the den and to our amazement, it started shooting pictures! My son (3 years old, in the background) was very curious about the octopus. Photographed in New South Wales, Australia.

19. Take Cover: Honorable Mention, Marine Life Behavior. We know this particular reef manta ray very well. She is known affectionately as Coco to researchers in the area. Coco is always accompanied by golden trevallies when we see her and, with her huge size, is always an impressive sight. On this particular day we had had amazing manta action throughout the day. As the afternoon drew to a close, we could see a few individuals feeding just 100 meters or so from shore. I decided to head back in and spend some more time with these gentle giants. Once in the water I could see three individuals somersault feeding, including Coco. Coco spent a good 15 to 20 minutes with me, circling, somersaulting. She was fully interacting with me, and it was a very special moment. As she was incredibly comfortable, I began to take some shots as she somersaulted right in front of me. As she gracefully danced through the plankton, I could see one particular golden trevally taking cover from me in Coco's mouth every time she somersaulted toward me. Coco would spit the fish out at the bottom of every turn, but as soon a she got back to the top the fish would hide away inside her mouth again. Photographed off West Yaukuve Levu Island, Fiji Islands.

20. Quarantine: 1st Place, Nudibranchs. I dove in an abandoned port in Green Island, Taiwan, last October. The depth of this port is only 3 meters. I found bubble algae on the sand everywhere. Suddenly I noticed a crystal bubble algae. This nudi got into the bubble algae, where it hides, eats, and lives. This nudi is only 5 millimeters long, and moves very slowly. I waited patiently for it to turn around.

21. My New Toy: 4th Place, Wide Angle. Play is very important in the development of young Steller sea lions and they love playing with anything that they find in their environment. When I was diving at Norris Rocks off Hornby Island, British Columbia, Canada, I watched this young sea lion play with a starfish. As I watched her, she swam over to me to show me her beautiful toy. I was able to capture this image just as she was presenting the starfish to me.