Best Underwater Pictures: Winners of 2012 Amateur Contest
- Second Place: Macro Photography - Perhaps only a half inch (1.3 centimeters) long, according to Schmale, a porcelain crab perches on a feathery sea pen in Komodo National Park, Indonesia.
- Overall Winner - A headshield sea slug pauses on a blade of grass in the U.S. Virgin Islands in the winning image of the University of Miami’s 2012 amateur Underwater Photography Contest, whose results were announced this month.
- First Place: Macro Photography - Two yellownose gobies peek out of a brain coral off the Caribbean island of Bonaire (map) in a macro, or close-up, picture.
- First Place: Wide-Angle - Lionfish swim among smaller fish in Israel’s Red Sea.”What they’ll often do is use their pectoral fins like fans and gently herd a school of little fish in front of them … and then inhale them once the fish is in front of their mouth,” Schmale said.
- Second Place: Student Photography - Harlequin shrimp—such as the one in this winning picture taken in Thailand’s Similan Islands—mate for life, and the pairs work together to capture and kill their favorite prey: starfish. One of the shrimp locates a starfish, flips it over, and drags the prey into the shrimp’s lair. The couple then devours the starfish’s internal organs, starting from the tips of its arms down to its central disk—keeping their victim alive for as long as possible.
- Third Place: Marine Life Portrait - Nudibranchs—such as this Cratena peregrina caught on camera off Greece—are roughly finger-size sea slugs whose 3,000-odd species thrive in seas cold and warm, shallow and deep. Whereas their ancient ancestors slipped across the seafloor in defensive shells, these gastropods come armed with toxic secretions and stinging cells.
- Third Place: Macro Photography - Emperor shrimp hitchhike on the back of a sea cucumber in Ambon, Indonesia. The tiny shrimp—each eye is only a millimeter wide—use the sea cucumbers as dining cars, eating whatever passes by. The “picture captures that environment—they’re riding on top of the train,” Schmale said.
- Third Place: Wide-Angle - Orange anthias fish swim amid soft corals in the Fiji Islands. Coral reefs cover less than one percent of the ocean floor but support about 25 percent of all marine creatures, according to the Coral Reef Alliance.
- Fan Favorite - Backlighted by the rising sun, a sea nettle jellyfish pulses across California’s Monterey Bay in the Rosenstiel School contest’s first “fan favorite” picture, chosen via online poll. Its trailing appendages covered in stinging cells, a sea nettle typically transfers captured prey from the jelly’s slender tentacles to its ruffled mouth-arms to its mouth, hidden inside the sea nettle’s bell. (See pictures of giant jellyfish off Japan.)
That is all.
Exotic Shorthair cat!
He’s saying “Zomg, check out my tail!” in the second one. What a beautiful kitty.
