According to the Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026 competition, stunning new imagery from the world’s oceans reveals rare deep-sea creatures, curious southern elephant seal pups, and ongoing conservation challenges captured by photographers.
Elephant Seals and Seahorses Win Top Recognition
Matty Smith captured a curious southern elephant seal pup taking its first dip in the shallow rock pools of Sea Lion Island in the Falkland Islands, according to the Ocean Photographer of the Year competition. Meanwhile, Julien Anton won the competition’s grand prize with a photograph of an adult male seahorse facing a very young juvenile in the shallow waters of Moorea in French Polynesia. As noted by competition organizers, males handle pregnancy, birth, and raising the young in most seahorse species.
Parasites and Predators in Shallow Waters
Stephen Lopez photographed tiny parasitic crustaceans known as copepods living inside the eye of a giant black sea bass near Santa Catalina Island off the southern California coast in the United States. This fish species stood near the brink of extinction in the region roughly 50 years ago before staging a population recovery. In another shallow-water encounter documented in the Philippines by Andrea Michelutti, a red scorpionfish was captured snapping its jaws onto a lizardfish, illustrating the stealth hunting behavior typical of the species on coral reefs.
Rare Encounters with Deep-Sea Giants
Anita Verde photographed an ocean sunfish roughly the size of a small car during the annual sardine run in Mexico in 2025. Verde told the BBC that the giant fish appeared to glow like a rising moon as it approached through the blue water. Separately, Mitsuna Kawai documented a ribbonfish swimming among a school of salps during a winter night dive off the coast of Osezaki, Japan. According to marine observations, these slender fish rarely appear alive because they inhabit extreme depths reaching 900 meters (2,950 feet).
Behavioral Adaptation and Conservation Efforts
John Kowitz photographed five spotted eagle rays gliding in formation over a sandy seabed in Hawaii, United States, where the animals use electrical receptors to locate buried mollusks and crustaceans. In Indonesia, Suliman Alatiqi captured a close-up of a male Banggai cardinalfish incubating newly hatched offspring inside its mouth for ten days without eating, a specialized strategy known as mouthbrooding. Francesca Page photographed a fragile juvenile lobster at the National Lobster Hatchery in Padstow, United Kingdom, where thousands of young lobsters are raised to improve survival rates compared to the wild ratio where only one in 20,000 reaches maturity.
Human Impacts on Marine Wildlife
Karsten Michels photographed a hunter killing a pilot whale on a shore in the Faroe Islands, an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark. According to the documented practices of the traditional drive hunt known as grindadráp, pods of pilot whales are steered toward beaches for slaughter, an activity that researchers note can leave lasting marks on marine ecosystems even on a limited scale.
Want to explore more stories about marine wildlife and conservation? Leave a comment below or subscribe to our newsletter for regular updates from the world’s oceans.
Related reading