The Winners Of The 2018 Underwater Photographer Of The Year Contest Will Take Your Breath Away

I was still a newbie when I took this photo. At that time the hype was the emperor shrimp on sea cucumber or any moving nudibranch. When my guide Jandri showed me the nudibranch it never occurred to me there would be a tiny shrimp on a nudi the size of your palm. I was more surprised when there was about 5 of them it. What caught my attention was the circle of sand stuck on the Pleurobranchidae nudibranch . It was a shape of a crop circle ! I waited about 15 minutes for the emperor shrimp to position itself on the nudi and quickly took the shot I wanted. Patience was indeed required since it is so small.

The Farne Islands is home to an estimated population of 5,000 Grey Seals. I like to visit during the autumn months, the water is generally at its warmest and clearest. This is also the breeding season which usually ensures plenty of activity and interaction. During this particular dive, myself and good friend/underwater photographer (Rob Cuss) noticed a real change in behaviour, the Seals were not interested in us, but much more into each other. This particular pair were highly affectionate and displaying many signs of courtship/mating. We had done countless dives at the Farnes but this was a show of behaviour we'd not witnessed before. The speed at which they'd change meant to capture this behaviour I needed to anticipate and work at pace. I managed to record a series of images that I was pleased with and felt they managed to really " tell a story"... a magical dive.

A number of sturgeon can be found at Capernwray in Lancashire. This fish was most likely released to this freshwater flooded quarry a number of years ago, possibly because of having outgrown someone's pond. Nevertheless, as a species sturgeon are actually native to the UK and have survived unchanged for centuries. My photo shows the fish going about its business of foraging for food in the silty bottom of the quarry. They sift through the silt looking for anything that they can swallow and in doing over create clouds of silt. It was a fun winter project looking for this fish and trying to get a pleasing behaviour photo.

The leopard-spotted goby (Thorogobius epippiatus) is a distinctive and rather attractive goby but such a skittish little fish. I have loads of side on shots of them and the harder I've tried to get them face on, the more twitchy they seem to be. Frequently, as I try to inch closer for a frame filling shot, they have the tenancy to turn their back on me, ready to beat a hasty retreat to some crevice in the rock. I had luck with this particular individual in a Scottish sea loch and managed one frame with the fish head on and both eyes facing forward before it quickly darted out of sight. Despite being a very common species all around the British coast I think I'd have trouble repeating this simple composition.

I had a free weekend so took-up a last minute space on our club trip to The Farne Islands. The Farne Islands are home to thousands of grey seals (also known as Atlantic seals), and each autumn hundreds of pups are born here. We’d arrived just before then but there were still plenty of younger seals keen to interact and explore these strange bubbling divers. This picture was taken on the 2nd dive of the day, when my 2 buddies acted as seal magnets and we had some glorious encounters. This seal obviously had an itch to scratch, as at one point he lay on his back waiting for his belly to be rubbed and as we were leaving him he was giving his tail a good scratch, pulling some interesting shapes in the process and which must have led to the satisfied grin he appears to be sporting!

My friend David and I created this image at an abandoned coral observatory off Nassau, Bahamas. This site had the perfect structure we needed to portray the idea of underwater bondage and imprisonment. With the jail cell like design of the overhang barriers of the dilapidated structure, it made the perfect underwater studio. It took about an hour and a half to create the shot with the use of a scuba regulator for assisted breathing and bubble making for special effects. The challenge was to time the perfect moment for the bubbles to be arranged around David's face. The result is something we are both proud of.

Mozambique is one of the best places in the world to dive with bull sharks. I was there specially for that. Diving with them is a guarantee of adrenaline. The visibility was great. Only blue....and bull sharks. For a few seconds there was plenty of them around us and I tried to my best.

Sometimes you just have to take advantage of a unique situation. A small group of four humpback whales were hanging around the coast of Shetland. The day before we went to see if we could see them. Luckily for us we saw all four with two of the humpbacks coming just off the point where we were stood allowing my one and half year old son to see them. There was a very short weather window so the next day I headed out with a good friend Brydon Thomason to try to shoot the whales for Scotland The Big Picture. Two of the whales were still there. We spent four hours slowly working with the two whales before an opportunity came to get in the water and within seconds they passed within meters of me. I had never dreamed that I would be shooting humpback whales of the UK coast.

The waters around the Isle of Man are a fantastic place to dive, see and photograph British marine life and The Burroo is no exception with its gullies full of diversity. I came across this dogfish on a morning dive and I could see from the way it was resting in the features of the gulley I had an opportunity to place my camera slightly under the front of the head to get all the head features framed. The challenge was to get close enough without disturbing the fish. Slow movements, patience and luck paid off, but try as I might I could not get the subject to smile!

We headed over to Brixham as there had been a lot of octopus sightings at the time and we were lucky enough to come across three on this particular dive , which was amazing . We also encountered two of my favourite John Dory's amongst other species so it ended up turning into a dive which won't be forgotten easily . I'm still trying for a front-on shot for this species but haven't found one willing to play ball...yet ! Have seen over half a dozen of these over the year which is very promising and showing that the Marine Conservation Zones are clearly having an effect.

This is a screen grab of a 3d model created using photogrammetry. Gozo has 3 wrecks in a line, MV Cominoland, MV Karla & MV Xlendi. The complete model was created from 2806 source photographs.

The diving in the Baltic Sea offers a very different prospect when compared to the UK. Its still dark and anoxic depths preserving wood in a way that is hard to imagine, let alone explain! In shallow water it is quite green with lots of particles (I visited in the summer), but by approximately 30m you have passed through the last of the thermoclines and almost all ambient light is left behind. The Balder lays in 50-55m of cold, dark but very, very clear water. Arriving on the aft structure the sight of the ship's wheel and bell together offered up a unique opportunity. I tried a few different angles both with and without a passing diver, but really like the effect of the wheel backlit. Bells 'n' Helms, how to keep a wreck diver happy! I can't wait to go and try again now!

Just off the shore in Loch Carron is a spectacular bed of brittlestars, a writhing mass of millions of fragile, snaking arms in astonishingly vibrant colours. The bed is quite dense in places, with dozens of brittlestars stacked one on top of the other like a giant echinoderm duvet. It makes an excellent habitat for other sea creatures and I enjoyed spotting crustaceans and fish hiding amongst them, including this Yarrell’s blenny, easily distinguished by the comical quiff over its head.

This photo was taken during a fantastic day diving at St. Abbs. The dive had started at the large gully at West Hurkers and we were making our way towards the Anemone Gullies when I spotted this octopus nestled amongst the soft corals which cover the boulders and bedrock here. I only had time to quickly compose and capture this single image before it shot off, passing underneath my buddy and disappearing into the distance. Most of my diving is in Scottish waters and I had never seen an octopus here before so spotting this one and being able to capture this single shot made it a really memorable dive.

This is an often photographed aeroplane in just 23 meters of water. The photo was already planned on the surface. I guided my models to the right places by shouting as we were all on rebreathers. An overcast day gave a soft, nice and not too bright light. I have about 10 different photo versions of the plane with the divers (closeups, strobe, no strobe etc.). This is the one I liked the most. The picture is a panorama of two images.

I had seen courtship behaviour at this South Eleuthera site in 2015 so I made a plan to try to capture it in 2016, but the weather didn't allow it. Luckily I got my chance in 2017 by camping out for 3 days at a beach nearby. On the second morning I woke up just before sunrise to the splashing sound of mating nurse sharks just 50 steps from shore in 2 feet of water. I had to calm myself down, get my camera settings where they needed to be and then watched and slowly approached on foot. The males came over to check me out and once they saw I wasn't a female shark, turned away. Once the males were locked on to the females pectoral fins they were so distracted it was like I wasn't even there.

A fisherman called. My friends and I mobilised. 28km offshore, drawn in by the stench, we found the Sperm Whale’s remains. Unable to resist, we slipped into the endless blue, 2000m above the ocean floor, to witness this natural wonder. Tiger and Blue Sharks casually paraded in and out of sight, occasionally feeding as the great carcass bobbed at the surface. The scene felt eerily calm, save for the excitement in our eyes. One Blue delightfully clung to our group like a curious puppy. I had to remind myself to stay vigilant, avoid photographer tunnel vision. Half an hour later, when a large Tiger became too curious and received a nose bump from my camera, we took our leave. Back on board with the camera on a pole I composed these close up images of the action. To me this photo naturally personifies the sharks as no feeding shot could.

A whip goby on a whip coral with some bokeh effect in the background made of a slate with glitter to reflect the light from the strobes.

On the day after a full moon in July 2017, we got lucky with about 80 manta rays converging on the plankton-rich Hanifaru Bay in Baa Atoll, Maldives. Personally for me, it was challenging to get a good composition with multiple mantas in the frame whilst balancing the ambient light cast from the sun through the rough-weather choppy seas at the bay, all the time fighting against the surface currents and trying not to get too overwhelmed by the mesmerising beauty portrayed by these beautiful creatures.

Every year in the Pacific Northwest of North America, wild Pacific Salmon make an epic migration from the ocean up the same rivers and streams that they were born in, sometimes traveling over a thousand miles inland to reproduce. Salmon are a keystone species in the Pacific Northwest as much of the surrounding flora and fauna depend on them for survival. However, Pacific Salmon are in a precipitous decline due to overfishing, dams, salmon farming and deforestation. This image is part of a series highlighting the decline of Pacific Salmon, their vital role in the ecosystem, and the need to protect them. Over the course of three months, I spent countless hours in 13°C water photographing this incredible migration. Eventually, my patience paid off when I captured this image of a male Pink Salmon fighting his way back upstream to continue his species and nurture the surrounding ecosystem.