UPY 2025

UPY  Save our Seas Foundation Marine Conservation - Runner Up
'Million dollar fish'
David Alpert

Put a million Dollar price tag on a species and you almost certainly guarantee it’s decline. The base picture of this double exposure was taken before sunrise in Tokyo’s fish market. Pictured, is one of the morning’s prize fish going from auction to be sliced up and fed into Japan’s insatiable sashimi markets. Single bluefin tuna have sold there for as much as US$3m. Unsurprisingly the species is heavily overfished. This impressive apex predator, that can live for 40 years and weigh 700 kg’s, has been so commoditised that Mitsubishi began buying up stocks for cold storage – betting on price rises as numbers inevitably fall. The overlay picture shows young wild fish in Mediterranean fattening pens. Capturing juvenile tuna before they have the chance to breed is potentially devastating. Profit overcoming common sense, consumer indifference, ineffective legislation enforcement and black-market racketeering - a heady mix, potentially disastrous for Bluefin tuna.

Judge's comment: David’s artistic combination of topclass underwater and above water conservation photography, inviting us to consider where we want to see bluefin tuna - as sashimi or as wildlife?
Alex Mustard