Striking drone image of young sharks hunting fish wins photo competition

By Rosa Rahimi, CNN

London (CNN) — The dynamics between predator and prey are laid bare in a striking image of fish being attacked by sharks in the shallow waters of the Maldives, which has claimed the top prize in this year’s Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition.

Photographer Angela Albi, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour in Germany, was aided by drone pilot August Paula in capturing the winning image of the silverside fish and four young sharks, according to a press release from the Royal Society.

“Just after sunrise or before sundown, the shallow waters of the Maldives become a clear, see-through surface,” said Albi in the 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.

The competition has five categories: astronomy; behavior; Earth science and climatology; ecology and environmental science; and microimaging. Albi’s image was winner of the behavior category, as well as overall winner.

In the astronomy category, photographer Imran Sultan captured the intricate details of two nebulae in the Cassiopeia constellation found more than 7,000 light years away.

A supraglacial melting lake in Greenland won the top award in the Earth science and climatology category. Photographer David Garcia was able to capture the image with an iPhone when a small window of light appeared on his flight to a coastal town in western Greenland.

“Tired eyes,” which depicts the eyes of a bark scorpion from up close, won the top prize in the microimaging category. Photographer Jose Manuel Martinez Lopez took 110 images of a dried out specimen to achieve the photo’s effect.

And the category for ecology and environmental science was won by Peter Hudson, who caught a secretary bird on camera as they were about to feast on a locust.

A selection of the winning and runner-up images can be viewed in the gallery above.

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