UPY 2025

UPY  Behaviour - Highly Commended
'Attack of the Blue Dragons'
Henley Spiers

In a rarely witnessed and fantastical scene, two blue dragon sea slugs feed on a blue button hydroid colony. As a young dive professional, downtime was spent scouring marine identification books to create a bucket list of encounters. My aspiration was to meet a blue dragon, an impossibly ornate pelagic sea slug, but it would take 13 years for it to be realised.
These small yet magnificent creations live in the open ocean, and are at the mercy of wind, tide and currents. Meeting dragons remained a pipe dream until last year. I was on assignment for a story on whales, but with a rich plankton bloom in the area, we temporarily abandoned ocean giants to search for 1 inch dragons. It seemed an impossible task, but fate was on our side and I could scarcely believe my eyes as I finally gazed at a blue dragon underwater.

Judge's comment: Otherworldly, almost mythological in it beauty. I love underwater images that seem to take you to an alien planet. A real favourite image of mine from the category, that didn't have enough action for all the judges! Henley is one of my regularly awarded photographers and his quest for hidden dragons has definitely been worth the wait.

Alex Mustard