This year’s Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition winner is a picturesque image of sharks hunting in the shallow waters of the Maldives. With assistance from drone pilot August Paula, postdoctoral researcher Angela Albi of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior took the photo, which depicts four juvenile sharks hunting silverside fish.
The winning picture from this year’s Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition highlights the raw strength and alluring beauty of marine life in the Maldives. Just after sunrise or before sundown, the shallow waters of the Maldives transform into a clear, see-through surface,” Albi noted in a Royal Society press release. “These are also the moments when we best observe the interactions between reef sharks and their prey. From the photographers’ bird’s-eye perspective, the raw instincts of nature come alive, as the school of fish move in almost perfect synchrony then split to avoid the sharks,” said Hugh Turvey, a member of this year’s judging panel.
Here is what Angela Albi said for her submission to the competition on the Royal Society website: “One of the main reasons animals group together is to avoid predators. In this case, a large school of hardyhead silversides faces four juvenile blacktip reef sharks, which occasionally attack, causing the fish to respond collectively. Blacktip reef sharks are a social species and as juveniles, they often gather in schools of fish near the shore in the Maldives, where they circle within the school. For my postdoctoral research, I study the interactions between blacktip reef sharks and baitfish schools in the Maldives. I use drones to capture behavior from above, focusing on whether the sharks coordinate during their hunts or how they interact with other species. This photo is a frame from our study drone footage, post-processed for contrast, exposure, and white balance.”
