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No Time to Waste

Winner: ?lvaro Herrero (Spain)

Humpback Whale. Pacific Ocean, Baja California, Mexico. A humpback whale with a buoy entangled to its tail, already decomposed, dies slowly and agonizingly. A clear reflection of the slow and painful death that we are giving to our oceans, our planet.

Finalist: Simon Lorenz (Germany)

Sea turtles face a multitude of man-made threats. The plastic trash floating in the ocean is often mistaken for food by sea turtles like this Olive Ridley in Sri Lanka. After ingesting the plastic, the turtles become too buoyant to dive. With their carapace floating above the water, they eventually dry out and die of heat exposure and starvation.

This Olive Ridley sea turtle was found entangled in a ghost net far off the coast of Sri Lanka. It was likely resting on the man-made island when it became helplessly entangled. Fortunately, it could be freed by my local guide and released without injury.

Finalist: Ines Goovaerts (Belgium)

Behold the mouth of the Ish?m River in Albania, one of the top 3 most polluted rivers in Europe. Due to issues related to waste management in this area, a significant amount of plastic trash every year ends up in the Adriatic sea.

As in-house photographer for the NGO River Cleanup, I¡¯ve traveled to this spot multiple times to capture the tragedy that is happening right in front of us. By involving people, companies and governments, River Cleanup¡¯s objective is to clean this river from source to end. Awareness, change and action are needed to turn the tide for this river, the sea, the planet and humanity. There is litter-ally no time to waste!

Putting the Ocean First

Winner: Tom Shlesinger (Israel)

Although the hawksbill sea turtle is critically endangered, it is quite common in the Gulf of Aqaba and Eilat, northern Red Sea. This sea turtle is among the smallest of all sea turtles and its diet is diverse, ranging from sponges and soft corals to jellyfish, crustaceans, and more. Here, a hawksbill sea turtle is checking out a coral nursery dubbed ¡°the igloo¡±. This dome-shaped artificial reef was built and placed in the sea more than two decades ago. Quickly after corals were transplanted onto the igloo, many more established themselves naturally, which in turn attracted numerous species of fishes and other animals to visit and inhabit the structure.

The wonderful world of tides

Winner: Chris Gug (USA)

While scouting the ocean for the aggregation of mobula rays off the coast of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico with my drone day after day, I came across the most beautifully powerful shorebreak where the massive waves crashed directly onto the sand, forming beautiful barrels energetically exploding directly on the beach.

Ocean is life

Winner: Shane Gross (Canada)

A mother and son gather sea urchins for their family at low tide in a seagrass meadow in Bali, Indonesia. Seagrass is an often overlooked coastal habitat important for food security, biodiversity, storm protection, and fisheries. Seagrass meadows also store carbon more efficiently than rainforests, helping in our fight against climate change. Seagrass is something conservationists and fishers agree needs to be protected.

Big and small underwater faces

Winner: Glenn Ostle (USA)

Underwater Seascapes

Winner: Andy Schmid (Switzerland)

A female orca splitting a herring bait ball while diving through it to get one, shot from underneath while freediving. Every winter enormous schools of herring migrate from the open ocean into the fjords of northern Norway and attract large numbers of big predators such as orcas and humpback whales. Witnessing orcas feeding on herring using the so-called carousel feeding technique is very exciting, but not easy to capture due to various factors: limited light and visibility, fast paced action plus cold surface and water temperature. Being able to freedive and capture the action of an ongoing feeding frenzy in these conditions is difficult but this winter I managed to create a series of photos I had never dreamt of capturing.