28 Breathtaking Images Taken Of Marine Life That Won The Ocean Photography Awards 2023

"Hidden yet unmistakable, a Northern gannet stares through a cloud of bubbles," says Spiers. "The bubbles were created by gannets, Britain’s largest seabird, diving in pursuit of fish. The silhouettes in the sky complete the story."

Balaram Stack surfs at Banzai Pipeline on the North Shore of O’ahu. "I took this image with a drone which was new to me," says Glaser. "I have photographed the Pipeline from every angle but have never seen it from above. I managed to get the swell, weather, wind, tide, and talent all in one shot. The rainbow at the edge of the wave is what made this one so special to me."

"A humpback whale dies a slow and painful death after being entangled in ropes and buoys, rendering its tail useless," says Lopez-Beltran. "The image is a sad metaphor for the slow and painful death that we are inflicting upon our ocean planet."

"This afternoon was one that I am never going to forget," says Rugli. "A big swell reached Sydney’s coastline with some waves reaching over 10 feet in height. Very few surfers had the courage to fight with these monsters. It was just before sunset, and the sky was covered with clouds. I didn’t expect any colors, but just before the sun reached the horizon, a gap opened up, and the setting sun painted the whole sky with mysterious red light. I wanted to create a dreamy feeling and started to shoot with a slow shutter speed to capture the unique scene."

"On a stormy grey morning, a rider is confronted with a dead whale," says Hoekendijk. "Both horse and rider appear to salute the whale, a victim of a mass stranding of 30 whales around the North Sea. Scientific papers hypothesised that strong solar storms had interfered with the whales' natural 'GPS', deceiving them into these shallow waters."

A young grey reef shark is hooked by an angler at night at Burma Bank, an offshore plateau in the Andaman Sea off the coast of Myanmar. "Although shark fisheries have been legally banned in Myanmar at the national level since 2009, there is a lack of enforcement at sea and poor trade regulation," says Arunrugstichai. "This image is not a picture of an industrial shark fishing boat. The shark was incidentally caught and released."

A response team in PPE cleans oil-contaminated sand along a beach hit by an oil spill in Rayong, Thailand in 2022. "Thailand's Pollution Control Department reported that a conservatively estimated 180,000 to 200,000 liters of crude oil were released from a pipeline spill off the shore of Rayong," says Arunrugstichai. "Some subsequent leaks in unknown quantities were also detected throughout the following week. Although the crude oil was cleared off by physical labor and chemical dispersant, the long-term impact on the marine environment is unknown and is still being monitored."

"Humans have enjoyed the gifts of the sea for generations," says Wang. "In China, these artisanal fishing fences stood proudly in the sea. I tried to capture this sense of pride and history in my image."