Wildlife photographer of the year: horseshoe crab wins gold – WeirdNews

(Web Desk) – A picture of a mysterious and other-worldly horseshoe crab has earned Laurent Ballesta the title of Wildlife Photographer of the Year (WPY) 2023.

The golden marine arthropod is seen hugging the bottom muds in waters off Pangatalan Island, in the Philippines.

It is tracked by three small fish, hoping the crab’s movements will expose an opportunistic meal in the sediment.

Ballesta becomes only the second photographer in WPY’s 59-year history to win the competition twice.

In 2021, he was awarded the grand prize for capturing a trio of groupers in the act of spawning.

The photographer and marine biologist was crowned during a gala dinner at London’s Natural History Museum.

Kathy Moran, who chaired the judging panel, said a winning image required four characteristics: “aesthetics”, “moment”, “narrative”, and increasingly “something that has a conservation edge to it”.

And Ballesta’s work had that “secret sauce”.

“There’s a luminosity to Laurent’s picture,” Ms Moran told BBC News.

“It really does feel like an alien floating across the seafloor – but when you step back and realise just how important these creatures are to ocean health and human health, we just felt the image brought it all together and we couldn’t pass it up.”