PORTFOLIO

Who needs scuba gear? Explore the underwater world with BirdLife South Africa’s Oceans of Life competition.

For the past seven years, we’ve been amazed by the quality of the photos from the BirdLife South Africa Oceans of Life competition. (See portfolios in go! #81, #108 and #118.) All good things run their course, however, and this year it was time to bid the competition farewell with a retrospective show at the Iziko South Africa Museum in Cape Town from October 2016 until June 2017, in aid of the Seabird Conservation Programme. Protecting South Africa’s sensitive coastline and ocean – and the world’s – should be at the very top of our list. Climate change is here and the signs are all around: Rainfall and snowfall patterns are changing, droughts and floods are happening more often and extreme weather events are becoming the norm. In order to survive, marine organisms must adapt by altering their behaviour, their habitat or their breeding patterns. But ultimately, it’s up to us: The global climate will continue to change, but the severity of that change depends entirely on what humans decide do about it.

Learn more about BirdLife South Africa’s conservation work and find out how to get involved at birdlife.org.za

The old man and the sea

Chris Fallows, Cape Point, South Africa (winner, 2014)

A huge ocean sunfish, also called a mola mola, swims through open water with two pilot fish for company. Viewed in profile, the sunfish has eerily human features – an old man adrift in the ocean.

HOW? Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 8 – 15 mm lens, shutter speed 1/200 second, aperture f8, ISO 250.