Photographer Page

Laurent Ballesta

Swimmers throughout the North Atlantic flee at the sight of this jellyfish, Pelagia nociluca, commonly known as the mauve stinger. Stinging cells cover its tentacles and entire body. But a black coral has paralyzed this one, off La Ciotat, in southern France. (From “They spent 28 days under the sea—and found another Earth,” April 2021.)

Off Marseille, 256 feet below the surface of the Mediterranean Sea, narwhal shrimp float in forests of black coral. (The coral is named for its black skeleton, but the living tissue is white.) The shrimp are around four inches long and send signals by touching antennae. In the Mediterranean bits of plastic have been found in their guts.

Laurent Ballesta was awarded Wildlife Photographer of the Year for this image of mating groupers.

A coelacanth swims in South Africa's Sodwana Bay. Long thought extinct, the animal was rediscovered in 1938.

On a nearly moonless night at Fakarava in French Polynesia, members of photographer Laurent Ballesta’s team, swimming against the tidal current, hold the powerful lights he needs to photograph sharks as they hunt for groupers hiding in the reef.

At night grey reef sharks hunt as a pack in the south channel of Fakarava Atoll, in the Tuamotu Archipelago in French Polynesia. Photographer Laurent Ballesta’s team, diving without cages or weapons, counted 700 sharks.

Shreds of grouper flesh fall from the jaws of two sharks as they rip a fish apart. After hunting together to roust the grouper from its hiding place in the reef, the sharks encircle it—and then compete for the spoils.

Divers hold lights to illuminate sharks as they hunt for groupers hiding in the reef.

A bioluminescent crown jellyfish, some 35cm wide, floats by at 40 metres deep, glowing and trailing a dozen stinging tentacles. These bell-shaped plankton-eaters avoid direct light, which can kill them.

Sea spiders are another example of mysterious 'polar gigantism'; they’re tiny in other places, but this one in Antarctica has legs that span seven inches. Colossendeis Megalonyx