Winners of Ocean Photographer of the Year Awards Highlight Mystery and Adventure Underwater

The world’s oceans are filled with incredible mystery and adventure as every one of the images from the Ocean Photographer of the Year competition will attest. The 2022 winners were recently announced and an image of a surfer battling the “heaviest wave in the world”  was unanimously judged the winner.

The Ocean Photographer of the Year’s mission is simple – to shine a light on the beauty of the ocean and the threats it faces.

The Ocean Photographer of the Year 2022, Overall

French Polynesia-based photographer, Ben Thouard, announced as Ocean Photographer of the Year for his image of a surfer battling the underwater turbulence created by the ‘heaviest wave in the world’, Teahupo’o, which translate as ‘place of skulls’.

Second place is awarded to Katherine Lu for her photo of a blanket octopus showing off its beautiful patterns and colors in the waters of the Philippines.

A cormorant diving through a huge school of baitfish thereby creating a series of shapes that mimic that of a human face won third prize.

Wildlife Category

1st: A pod of pilot whales pose for a family portrait.

2nd: A seemingly giant blue crab feeds in the current.

3rd: A manta ray, and beautiful symmetry.

Highly Commended

An orca mother and calf swim in the open ocean, sun rays beaming through the surface of waters in Norway.

A juvenile scalloped ribbofish. It ranges when to down to 90 meters depth and may grow to over a meter in length.

Two polar bear cubs cosy up to the mother.

A mako shark – the fastest shark in the ocean – speeds beneath the setting sun.

Adventure Category

1st: A cave diver surveys an underwater cave system, surrounded by gigantic formations that have taken millennia to form.
Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico form, and that she is seeing for the first time!”

2nd:  A freediver swims with a matriarchal pod of five sperm whales. The sperm whale is the largest of the toothed whales and are known to dive as deep as 1,000 meters in search of squid to eat.

A diver moves through an abandoned sinkhole-like cenote, like floating through a haunted forest along the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico.

Human Connection Category

1st: A freediver interacts with a sperm whale amidst a cloud of Sargassum weed.

2nd: A dive guide cuts an Olive Ridley turtle free from plastic debris.

3rd: A surfer floats atop a calm sea in Australia.

Portfolio Category

Winner Matty Smith provides a wonderful glimpse into the lives of seahorses, sea dragons and anenome fish.

A White’s seahorse (Hippocampus Whitei) clings to a shark net in Sydney Harbour, Australia

Anemone fish at home in their colourful anemone.

Weedy Seadragon at Cape Solander, Kurnell, Botany Bay, Sydney NSW Australia.

A male cuttlefish, still displaying its courting colors, is photographed next to the ink of two other males that had been fighting over a female.

Martin Broen took second place in Portfolio for his haunting images capture the largest mammal on the planet among others.

A blue whale mother and her calf off La Paz, Mexico.

A diver descends into the “Blue Abyss” sinkhole, which sits within an underwater cave system.

A frog fish “fishes” with its lure in the Lembeh Strait, Indonesia.

Third place portfolio winner Jake Wilton focused his camera on the ocean life in Australia.

A humpback whale rises from the Indian Ocean into the golden glow of a Western Australia sunrise.

A leopard shark swims through the shallow lagoon of the Ningaloo Reef.

A blue spotted lagoon ray feeds in the shallows of Coral Bay during sunset.

A school of yellowtail scad fish surround a manta ray as it cruises the coastline of the Ningaloo Reef.

Young Photographer Category

1st: A green turtle hatchling takes a breath before its first great journey.

2nd: An orca mother and calf play in the open ocean.

3rd: A juvenile brown pelican surveys the choppy shallows.

Female Fifty Fathoms Award

Brooke Pyke was awarded the Female Fifty Fathoms for her wide range of stunning ocean photography taken in Western Australia.

A manta ray cruises above a sandy seabed off Coral Bay, Western Australia.

A whale shark, and company.

A dolphin plays and poses in the shallow waters of the Ningaloo Reef lagoon.

Two Stoke’s sea snakes mating.

A playful sea lion looks at its reflection in Brooke’s camera.

Conservation (Impact)

1st: An Olive Ridley sea turtle entangled in a mass of ocean debris.

3rd: Polar bears make a ‘home’ of an abandoned station on Kolyuchin Island in Russia.

Conservation (Hope)

1st: An aggregation of critically endangered grey nurse sharks of the coast of New South Wales.

2nd: A pink whipray swims amidst schooling bannerfish.

3rd: Three green sea turtles gather under the sun in Maui.

Another in the competition includes Fine Art.

The competition is produced by Oceanographic Magazine in partnership with Blancpain, Princess Yachts and Tourism Western Australia, and in support of conservation organization SeaLegacy. Each year there is a free month-long Tower Bridge exhibition in London, UK.

To learn more about the competition and to see all the winning images visit www.opy2022.com.