Daniel Sly, Underwater Residents of Sydney (ANIMAL 2022)

In addition to being Australia's most populous city, Sydney is also home to a massive amount of marine biodiversity. A great portion of which many would not know existed and is just metres below the surface and footsteps from where we all work, live and play. In this series of photographs, I attempted to capture a sense of home for each of the marine animals, all of which are performing daily behaviours such as mating, hunting and simply watching their own world drift by. Selective lighting techniques were used to highlight the unique colour and structure of each distinctive creature. A pair of ceratosoma amoenum nudibranchs are engaged in their distinctive mating dance perched atop a branch of soft coral. The potentially deadly yet apprehensive southern blue-lined octopus watches carefully for potential prey from its hiding spot, utilising its arm suckers to pull two kelp fronds in close. Finally, a tiny pygmy pipehorse, measuring no more than a centimetre in length uses it’s prehensile tail to cling to the soft coral in the slight surge.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.