Winners Gallery

<< Back to WINNERS GALLERY

Finalist The Ocean Unseen: Hidden Worlds

Steven Lopez Avalon, California, USA

33°20'55.8"N 118°19'30.0"W

A close view of a giant black sea bass reveals tiny parasitic copepods clustered around its eye in a Catalina Island kelp forest. Once misidentified on other hosts, these copepods are now known to have a specific relationship with this threatened fish. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the giant black sea bass was nearly extinct in Southern California but is now recovering through protection efforts. This image highlights how even a giant predator can support a hidden community of much smaller organisms.

BEHIND THE LENS

Ocean Photographer of the Year 2026 STELOP6

Steven Lopez

ABOUT THE IMAGE

  • Scuba, Coastal Walk-in
  • Sony A1, 90mm lens, Nauticam Housing, Backscatter Hybrid Flash x1
  • ISO 3200, F10, 1/125

Steven Lopez is the Co-Founder and Photographer of Explorers Photography. He is an L.A. local of Mexican/Native American heritage. Steven began his career as an avid diver, passionate about artistic ocean photography and his local marine environment around Catalina Island. His interests gradually expanded into the evolution of maritime navigation, which led him to study at the University of Southampton and later MIT. Holding an MSc, Steven’s work now spans ancient shipwreck sites, remote river systems, and polar waters, having dived and documented fragile underwater ecosystems from California to the Amazon, and the Arctic and Antarctic regions.