UPY 2025

UPY  Wrecks - Winner
'Engine with a saddle'
Brett Eldridge

We were out scanning targets in June when we saw a very small, but promising sonar blip 230 feet deep. I geared up and jumped in hoping for something special. After some searching, my heart started racing when I first saw fish then the propeller of an almost completely intact, single-engine WW II airplane! It turned out to be a F8F-1 Bearcat, a rare aircraft that Neil Armstrong famously once said was his favorite and has been described as "An Engine With a Saddle." Alone on the first dive with limited bottom time, I took enough photos to build a "draft" model and identify the wreck. Needing a better photogrammetry model for the UPY contest and with deadlines quickly approaching, I booked December 19th and crossed my fingers. We fortunately had epic conditions and I got the photos I needed. It was my last dive of 2022.

Judge's comment: Underwater photogrammetry, that creates a three dimensional panorama of the subject is a recent technique in underwater photography that has proved incredibly useful for studying reefs and wrecks. Allowing academics to study in detail measure and visualised the underwater world, without going down there. Yet Brett’s image also reveals how eye catching these images can be, rewriting the rules of wreck photography underwater, and providing the world with it's first view of this crashed World War II fighter.
Alex Mustard