Don’t worry. Those suckerfish are just hitching a ride in that whale shark’s mouth.
This incredible image scooped the Grand Prize in Scuba Diving magazine’s 2020 Underwater Photo Contest, an annual competition celebrating the finest photography captured across the seven seas.
The Through Your Lens competition, now in its 16th year, attracted 2,636 entries from around the world.
Evans Baudin, of Baja California, Mexico, grabbed the winning shot while on an expedition in June 2020 to document marine life and the effects of reduced marine traffic due to Covid-19.
There are four contest categories, with the top prize in the Behavior set going to Australian Jules Casey’s of a pipefish tussling with a shorthead seahorse in Victoria’s Port Phillip Bay.
“This interaction lasted only about 10 seconds, which was just enough time to set up the shot,” says Casey.
A seahorse also proved lucky for Jeffrey Haines, of West Palm Beach, Florida, who won the Macro category with his image of one of the tiny marine-dwellers in a clump of sargassum.
“Persistence and concentration are the keys to success in finding your subject as you drift along,” says Haines.
Tobias Friedrich of Anilao, Philippines, won the Compact Camera category thanks to a colorful shot of a juvenile wonderpus resting on a palm leaf.
“As a SeaLife camera brand ambassador I always have a DC2000 with me, in addition to my DSLR setup, to take a few side shots,” he says.
A moody picture of a diver descending into the black depths of a sinkhole in Puerto Morelos, Mexico won the Wide Angle category.
“My buddy, hanging above that cloud and lit by sun rays, appeared so small that I spent the whole dive shooting from distance, trying to capture the tiny diver in that huge space,” says photographer Martin Strmiska.
Entries will be accepted for the 2021 Through Your Lens competition from November 1.