Boat World News

Aphoto of the last second of a young penguin’s life – captured by Israel’s Amos Nachoum – was the winning entry in the Animals in their Environment category of this year’s Siena International Photo Awards (SIPA) held recently in Italy.

The 2018 contest – the fourth edition of SIPA – honours photographers whose visual creativity and skills resulted in pictures that capture or represent a moment or event of great impact. The jury gave prizes in 10 categories to 58 photographers from 39 countries.

This year’s event proved particularly competitive, with some 48,000 photographers from 156 countries vying for the honours.

Nachoum gave his image of the penguin and leopard seal a sobering title – Facing Reality. It was taken off Pleneau Island in the Antarctic peninsula.

“The seal was hiding, waiting to ambush young penguins as they got closer. When a penguin got close enough, the seal moved extremely fast and caught the penguin by its feet dragging it to the open water. I was following parallel to the action. The seal released the penguin twice and the terrified penguin succeeded in escaping, but the seal continued chasing after it, and on the third attempt, drowned the penguin and devoured it.”

Other notable entries in the Animals in their Environment category (see alongside) included Sperm Whale Herd (Tony Wu), Dolphin Hunting (Greg Lecoeur), Killer Whale in Polar Night (Audun Rikardsen) and School of Barracuda (Francis Pérez).

The overall winner of the competition – the SIPA Contest Photographer of the Year 2018 – was Bangladeshi photographer K M Asad for his Battle Victim – an image of a young, traumatized Rohingya refugee.