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Nick Brandt Visualizes the Effects of Rising Seas in His Unsettling Underwater Photos

Although warming global temperatures are causing sea levels to rise around the globe, the Pacific islands are experiencing the change at a more rapid rate than anywhere else. Higher tides and extreme weather can wage unrelating flooding, rendering low-lying regions uninhabitable and displacing the communities that call them home.

In Sink / Rise, Nick Brandt peers into the not-so-distant future to imagine the effects of rising waters. His photographs depict people performing unremarkable tasks like sitting at a table or tottering on a seesaw, although their surroundings are incredibly unsettling. Shot entirely in-camera off the coast of Fiji, each seemingly mundane scene occurs on the ocean floor. The subjects hold their breath as they pose and wear a rigid, stifled expression reflective of the imagined catastrophe. It’s easy to envision their suffocation quickly becoming literal.

Conjuring an apocalyptic reality, Brandt is known for visualizing the often difficult-to-comprehend impacts of the climate crisis and now, its remarkable potential for danger. Sink / Rise is the third part of an ongoing series titled The Day May Break, which depicts people and animals affected by environmental destruction in Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Bolivia. Now available in a book published by Hatje Cantz, the most recent collection is the first situated underwater.

As Zoë Lescaze describes in the introduction, the portraits are haunting and appear “as though the familiar laws of physics have stalled in this strange, liminal zone between land and sea.” Rather than buoyantly swim or float, the subjects are critically bound to their submerged positions.

Pick up Sink / Rise on Bookshop, and find more from Brandt, including upcoming opportunities to see The Day May Break in person, on his site and Instagram.

 

Nature Photography

Dive Below the Surface with the Stunning Images of the 2024 Underwater Photographer of the Year

Below a darkened, ice-coated sea off the coast of Greenland, a brave diver encounters the enormous, skeletal remains of minke whales. Illuminating a historical and cultural practice, the spectral image by Alex Dawson won the 2024 Underwater Photographer of the Year contest, drawing attention to humanity’s impact on marine mammals.

This year’s contest was the most competitive to date, garnering 6,500 submissions from around the globe. Additional winners include JingGong Zhang’s image of hormonal Zoarchias major eelpouts sparring over nests during breeding season and a shot of a famished Mahi Mahi chomping on a sardine by Lisa Stengel.

Find more and the stories behind the photos on the UPY site.

 

Photography

Motherly Sacrifices and Aquatic Angst Top This Year’s Ocean Art Photography Contest

As they care for their unhatched babies, female octopuses refuse to eat, causing them to die of starvation before their young emerge from their eggs. Kat Zhou documented one of these marine mothers as she was in the process of such a fatal sacrifice, and the photo won the Ocean Art 2022, the 11th annual contest hosted by Underwater Photography Guide.

Zhou’s image was chosen from thousands of entries submitted from 96 countries, and the intimate photo joins a collection that encompasses a vast array of aquatic life and antics. Two aggressive pike blennies go head to head, a frog flashes a peace sign, and a menacing parasite hunts for its next victim. Find some of our favorite images below, and see all of the winning photos on the contest’s site.

 

Photography

A Stunning Image of a Surfer Trapped Under One of the World’s Heaviest Waves Wins the Ocean Photographer of the Year

The 2022 Ocean Photographer of the Year contest highlights the vast array of colors and textures within marine environments. More than 5,000 entrants from around the world submitted to this year’s competition, with winning images framing the iridescent, billowing membranes of creatures spotted during blackwater dives, the speckled tentacles of baby squid, and a school of baitfish swirling into a choreographed pattern. The top prize was awarded to photographer Ben Thouard for his disorienting image of a surfer trapped under one of Tahiti’s infamous Teahupo’o waves, which are among the heaviest swells in existence.

Selected photos are on view through November 7 next to Tower Bridge in London, and you can see the entire 2022 collection on the contest’s site.

 

Photography

Underwater Photos by Steven Kovacs Frame the Shimmering Unearthly Bodies of Larval Fish

Set against the stark backdrops attainable only during blackwater dives, larval fish become strange, otherworldly specimens with glasslike bodies and translucent fins that billow outward. Their delicate, still-developing anatomies are the subjects of Steven Kovacs’s underwater photos, which frame the young creatures at such precarious stages of life.

Living in Palm Beach, Kovacs (previously) frequents the waters off the Florida coasts, although he’s also recently explored areas near Kona, Hawaii. Expeditions have brought encounters with both the elusive acanthonus armatu and a type of larval ipnopidae that hasn’t been documented previously. “Of course, we are always hoping to run across a never-before-seen species like the discoverichthys praecox,” he says. “To be the first to ever find and photograph a species in the wild is an absolute thrill.”

Next on Kovacs’s list are a hairy goosefish larva and a crocodile toothfish species. Dive into an extensive archive of his images on Instagram, and pick up a print from Blue Planet.

 

Science

Underwater Footage Captures a Graceful Whale Shark Swimming Through the Gulf of Thailand

Underwater footage from a dive off the coast of KoTao opens on the spotted body of a whale shark. Documented by a small team from Aquatic Images on two excursions, the giant, slow-moving creature is shown gliding gracefully through the Gulf of Thailand with what appears to be dozens of remora, or suckerfish, tagging along for the ride—these smaller swimmers tend to clean bacteria and parasites from their host in exchange for food and easy travel.

Whale sharks are currently the largest living fish species, and similar to flamingos, they’re filter-feeders, although they utilize a cross-flow method that involves water passing by the filter toward the back of the throat rather than through it. Their distinctive spots are also unique to each specimen, meaning that like human fingerprints, no two patterns are the same.

This is the second time in recent years that Aquatic Images has encountered the “gentle giant,” and you can find more of its undersea footage on YouTube. (via The Kids Should See This)