Ocean Photographer of the Year accessibility - Portfolio

Ocean Portfolio Award is awarded to the photographer who most convincingly showcases a long-held commitment to ocean conservation through a striking body of work.

Winner Ocean Portfolio Award, Shane Gross

Image size on a black background, with an overall image size 143.5 x 143.5cm, 10 of Shane Gross’s images.

The location where each image was captured accompanied by a brief description of each image, with information from the photographer, is included here. Listen right through to hear a detailed description of just one of these remarkable photographs.

Cuba

“A critically endangered Cuban crocodile mouths the camera. The crocodile’s lower jaw is below the waterline, the tea-coloured water shades its teeth and the white mouth flesh, orange.

Alaska

A crested sculpin hides in the stinging tentacles of a lion’s mane jellyfish. “The tentacles provide both shelter and food for the cryptic fish in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. Long, clear noodle-y tendrils hang, around the little pink fish. Its fins are yellow, speckled with black and frill-like”

British Columbia, Canada

“Western toad tadpoles migrate from the safer, deeper part of a Vancouver Island lake to the sunlit shallows to feed on algae and other organic matter.” Black, sperm-like bodies pepper the image, a forest of tall, thin red and green sea grass surrounds them on both sides.

British Columbia, Canada

Opalescent squid mate and lay their eggs off Vancouver Island. “The female will deposit 100 to 300 eggs into the sand and cover them with a sticky substance to anchor them to the seabed.” White clusters of banana - shaped, squid eggs rise from the seabed, like coral. 2 spots of light in the black water illuminate several squid, including one central white squid with a glowing white eye.

British Columbia, Canada

A male and female pink salmon spawn as their last act before perishing and feeding the forest in Campbell River, British Columbia. Surrounded by similarly coloured others, two large, gold-shimmering salmon face to our right, one atop the other, their mouths open, eying the camera with one black-pupiled, round golden eye each.

The Bahamas

An endangered chupare stingray feeds on a sand flat at dawn in the Bahamas. On an endless beach, resting in shallow water, the round, disc-shaped ray is surrounded by rippling water, against a pink tinged sky reflecting into the ocean behind it.

British Columbia, Canada

Baby plainfin midshipman fish, still attached to their yolk sacs. “They are guarded over by their father until they are big enough to swim out from under the rock they are living on in the intertidal zone and swim to ocean depths.”

The Bahamas

Nurse sharks cross on a shallow sand flat in the Bahamas. “This moment was part of a days-long courtship ritual.” In textured, rippling light-coloured water two spotted whale sharks form an X shape, tails overlapping.

Indonesia

“An octopus explores the most pristine coral reef I’ve ever seen,” says Gross. “Here, in remote Indonesia only accessible via liveaboard, cold water upwellings meet warm tropical waters in a current-swept area.” Surrounded by rocks and ledges covered with orange, red and green plant life a lumpy, textured, brown and cream octopus flexes and curves. Above the reef the blue water teams with small, dark coloured fish

French Polynesia

A humpback whale mother pushes her calf in a unique show of love in Tubuai, French Polynesia. The mother noses her offspring as it swims down, its white underbelly facing us in the blue-coloured ocean.

Returning to the Baby plainfin midshipman fish in the middle of the image, 

Here is a more detailed description.

Location British Columbia Canada

Plainfin Midshipman fish can grow up to 38cm in length. They are brown to olive in colour, with a purple dorsal and a yellow belly. They are bioluminescent during their search for a mate and when trying to attract prey. They have photophores on their heads, flanks and bellies that emit light. Their photophores resemble the buttons on a naval officers uniform and its how they get their name.

In this image dark water surrounds a cluster of baby midshipman fish. Four babies stand out in the foreground, other’s behind, not so clearly defined. A collection of eyes and tails. The babies have round heads, and trailing, diminishing tails. Their little forms are a ghostly pinkish white, each with a pair of wide-set, unseeing, bulging black eyes, on the front of their heads. The filmy skin around each round eye is flecked with gold as though sprinkled with glitter.

Their bodies are similarly dusted with gold, particularly the tops of their translucent white heads. Beneath each baby, anchoring it in place, is a ballooning yolk bigger than their own heads. The yolk’s thin, pinky-white exterior is marbled with a network of spidery, red veins extending down from below each chin. The red vein network is thicker around this point of connection. Frothily filling each yolk sack are many glassy, yellow balls, tinging the sac bright yellow.

The two babies on our left have their wide mouths, at the front of their heads, just open, pinkish white and unformed within, the others are closed. Along the bottom edge of the image is a sticky, gelatinous yellow substance forming a bed that rises to support each yolk sack, an organic cupping system anchoring them in place, mottled with miniscule black debris.

On our left, in the inky, out of focus background, an oval breakaway tuft of yellow debris is rising above the babies' heads.