Ocean Photographer of the Year - The Female Fifty Fathoms AwardOcean Photographer of the Year - The Female Fifty Fathoms Award 

Winner Ocean Photographer of the Year – The Female Fifty Fathoms Award presented by BlancPain  

Jialing Cai

 

The Female Fifty Fathoms Award was created in 2021 by Oceanographic Magazine and Blancpain to promote women in the field. Each year it celebrates one woman’s portfolio of work.  

Of the 116 images selected for this year’s Ocean Photographer of the Year, 19% were taken by women. The inclusion of this award increases that figure to 28%.  

What makes this award different is that the photographers are nominated by their peers, their fellow photographers. In the other categories, photographers submit their own work. The winner is selected by the judging panel, including the Blancpain President & CEO, Marc A. Hayek, and his team.  

Jialing Cai is an underwater photographer and marine science communicator based in Chongqing China. Her work sits at the intersection of science, art, and exploration, with a focus on documenting the biodiversity of plankton, some of the ocean’s smallest and most overlooked inhabitants. Her mission is very simple: to make the invisible ocean visible, bringing its hidden life into classrooms, scientific lectures, and public spaces around the world.  

Total image size is 2.4m x 2.4m with 10 images of varying sizes together on a black background. 4 Larger images form a Y shape in the top two corners and down the middle. 6 more photographs make up the rest, slightly smaller in size.  

All images from Anilao Philippines  

 

Top left image

Image 1.

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A larval deep-sea fish makes a swift turn mid-water. “Its translucent body reveals a delicate scaffolding of bones,” explains Cai. “A tail trails behind in graceful motion. Though tiny in size, it carries the presence of a dragon.”  

 

Description

Because these images are taken many meters below the surface the background is black, flecked with tiny dots of colour from the debris in the water. This is a big-headed, clear fish captured in a ribbon-like ‘C’ shape, its tail above its yellow- tipped head. The end of its tail is a bright yellow, its little body is clear, with rows of ridges and bones beneath translucent skin. There are small, clear fins beneath its chin and at the sides of its head. Inside its head, behind one large greenish-yellow eye its organs are orange with a splash of red. Below the eye is a small, translucent jaw with tiny teeth and above the eye, on the fish’s skin are a cluster of small brown dots like eyebrow freckles.  

 

At right –

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Image 2. Two tiny fish – no bigger than thumb nails – navigate the open ocean at night beneath the fragile shelter of a drifting piece of candy wrapper. “The wrapper was an unintended refuge in a world increasingly shaped by human debris,” says Cai.  

 

Description

Both startled-looking, wide-eyed, bright yellow fish swim left, their clear tails fluttering so much as to be almost missing in the image. Above and behind them, a white, black and yellow crumbling-edged piece of opaque plastic, like a tiny graffiti wall floats in the darkness.  

 

In the centre directly below –  

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Image 3. Almost ethereal in its translucency, a juvenile wunderpus octopus is surrounded by a variety of small zooplankton, such as larval shrimps, crabs, and worms.  

 

Description

Milky coloured, overlapping and entwining tentacles, are bunched up in the act of propelling the octopus diagonally up through the water, to our right. Above its tentacles, is its bulbous, see-through head and within it, an egg-shaped centre surrounded by smoky whisps. The white egg-shape glows, covered in big flecks of orange and red.  

In the surrounding water are 14 tiny, white-ish shrimp-like creatures, scattered against the utterly black background.  

 

In the top right, a larger image

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Image 4. Inside a jellyfish, a baby octopus is being digested. “For many small zooplankton, the jellyfish’s gut becomes their final resting place. But for others, such as certain fish species, the jellyfish’s tentacles offer refuge against predators.”  

 

Description

A fish on top of a wide cylindrical jellyfish, bunched and oval shaped, trapped inside the jellyfish a baby octopus protrudes at the bottom.  

A wide, arrow-shaped, bluish-silver trevally, dotted with gold markings, is swimming down at an angle. From its top and bottom fins extend two, long, pointy, yellow- tipped growths, like a spikes. In the middle of its head is one round yellow eye with a black centre  and below, a small, open mouth. The trevally’s chin rests lightly on a clear, water-filled, domed bell of a jelly fish.  

Jellyfish drift in the water with limited control over their horizontal movement. Muscles contract in their ‘bell’ , forcing water out through an opening to create vertical movement. They sort of mushroom along, expelling water. This jellyfish has ridged, short, fine tentacles pointing upwards around the edges of its wide, partially flattened spherical bell. Like a mixture of beads attached to the brim of a full brimmed sun hat.  From the centre of its beadlike tentacles, inside its oval-shaped digestive pouch hangs an upside-down baby octopus, whitish with dotted brown markings on its head and dull, red eyes, it is trapped in its pendulous prison. 

 

On our left, row two of three

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Image 5. As if in prayer, a larval shrimp stretches out its claws. “Its translucent body reveals its bright red digestive organ,” explains Cai. “In the ocean, red is the first colour to vanish, making this internal organ nearly invisible to others.”  

 

Description

The shrimp is vertical in the water. Two sets of thin legs frame either side of the shrimp’s head. They are framed by two, large front pincers stretching up and out either side of its narrow head. Taller, orange tinged, fine, front feelers stretch into the water, longer than these pinchers, protruding from the tip of its head. At the tip of its mouth are a collection of smaller, clear feelers. Side mounted, orange and clear eyes with black pupils stick out either side of its head. From within its body an oval shaped central collection of organs glow orangey-red. Its bluish clear, segmented tail curls down below. Beautiful, fragile and yet comically celebratory.  

 

To the right

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Image 6. An immortal jellyfish with its tentacles relaxed. “It slowly turned around and delineated the shape of a storm, resulting in this beautiful photograph,” says Cai.  

 

Description

At the centre, angled down to our left is the jellyfish’s narrow, domed body. See-through amber with a yolk-like opaque centre.  

All around it, extending into the water, are long, fine tentacles, illuminated white by the light. They swirl and undulate, curl and billow, in their thin, white elegance.  

 

At right

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Image 7. A fish captures a jellyfish. “It potentially grabbed it for chemical defence by taking advantage of the toxins in its tentacles,” says Cai. “While the fish was holding the jelly, it looked to me like it was blowing up a balloon.”  

 

Description

An unusual fish is horizontal in the image. Its long, tapered tail is on our left marked by pale, green-and-black curving vertical stripes. Its narrow tail widens only slightly into a narrow body with ridged fins on either side. Along its body are faint, gold stripes and its head is see-through- its pink jaw muscles and organs are within. From the top of its skinny, wide head grows a ridged, whitish-clear spike. It curves backwards. Near the top of its head, under the spike, is one yellowy-green eye with a black pupil. Its lips are pursing – out in front - in the act of sucking on a jellyfish’s bell. As it vacuum’s up its prey from the water, the jellyfish’s short, thread-thin, clear tentacles are splayed out around and below the bell. The background is black.  

 

Bottom left, row three of three

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Image 8. Crabs begin life as plankton, undergoing several dramatic metamorphic stages before reaching their familiar form. “This image captures a juvenile crab in the act of moulting, shedding its old exoskeleton much like slipping off a sweater,” says Cai.  

 

Description

In the middle of the image, positioned diagonally, and facing down, is an unusually coloured crab, its skeletal detail is milky white against the black background. Crabs have a round, hard body and five pairs of legs, with larger pincers at the front. This crab glows from within, a centre of brightly coloured orange organs surrounded by the milky colour of its exoskeleton. It has two, round bright eyes on its head and a set of little pinchers lined  with fine, spikey-  growths on the front of its head. Its legs are crimped close to its body, all bent in. One claw-like pincer extends, still attached to its former skin, a ghostly mirror facing it. The clear, crab -shaped and shed exoskeleton still has all the details intact.  

  

To the right of this image

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Image 9. A baby octopus hitches a ride on a leaf. “It appeared like it was sailing alone across the vast darkness of the open ocean,” remembers Cai.  

 

Description

A bright yellow leaf curls like a breaking wave, shorter at the front and flowing in an arch out behind. At the tip of the wave-like leaf on our left, perches a glowing amber and clear tiny octopus. It grips the leaf with its brown-spotted tentacles. The curling leaf has a wide, warm-brown dappled underside which echoes the brown colouring on the octopus. In the deep, black water around them are flecks of white debris.  

 

In the bottom right corner

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Image 10. A larval pufferfish, roughly the size of a thumb nail. “Although adult pufferfish are typically found around coral reefs, they begin life as plankton, drifting in the open ocean before eventually settling on the seafloor,” says Cai.  

A free-floating puffball, entirely covered in soft-peaked, short pikes. The spikes are a milky-translucent colour and its central, ball shaped body is pink, flecked with collections of tiny black dots. Propelled at the rear by 3 splayed, fine fins, the little one is drifting to our right. There is one round, shiny, golden eye with a black pupil at the front of its circular body.  

 

This is the end of the audio description.