Mesmerizing Underwater Photos That Provide Rare Glimpses Of Sea Life

This gorgeous photo was taken in the Maldives and it shows a baby black-tipped reef shark swimming through a veritable buffet of fish. The composition of the pic is mesmerizing: the way the fish have parted makes it look almost like a painting. In truth, the little fishies have the right idea to make way for the shark, as they are undoubtedly on the menu! Interestingly, black-tipped reef sharks are predators to small fish, but harmless when it comes to humans. In fact, they’re so shy they tend to avoid divers at all costs.

This little guy is a clownfish: the very species that was the star of Pixar’s beloved animated classic Finding Nemo! In the film, Nemo’s mom dies and then his dad has to go on a perilous journey to find him when he gets lost. If the filmmakers had stayed scientifically accurate, though, the plot would’ve been very different, as clownfish actually have the ability to change genders. If a mother clownfish dies, the father would simply become female and mate with the nearest male. That’s a very different movie!

Snorkelers regularly see incredible things when they’re beneath the waves; one example is this lucky diver swimming in an underwater cave with a school of silverside fish. EcoTreasures founder Damien McClellan told British newspaper The Guardian, “With snorkeling, you never know what you’re going to see. And part of it is relaxing.” To get the best outcome on a dive, his advice is to control your breathing, stay calm, and focus on actually taking in your surroundings. He promised, “When you do that, you see the most amazing stuff.”

The star of this breathtaking image is the Cinetorhynchus reticulatus, also known as the dancing shrimp! This dude is living his best life on soft coral in Egypt’s Red Sea. Incredibly, there are more than 2,000 species of shrimp swimming around in the world’s oceans: for comparison’s sake, we know of only 340 breeds of dog. Heck, the real number of shrimp might even be bigger than that, as it’s estimated that an insane 91 percent of ocean-dwelling species haven’t been officially classified yet! 

This spooky-yet-beautiful image is the perfect encapsulation of the mystery of the ocean. Diver Nicholas Samaras once told website Insider, “Diving by itself is a unique experience. Whether you take photos or not, [it] is something that takes you into an unknown world with unique inhabitants.” Indeed, “unknown” is the key word here: it’s estimated that 80 percent of the ocean is still totally unexplored by man. Some experts even believe human beings know more about the surfaces of the Moon and Mars than we do about our Earth’s own seas!

Most undersea photos fill us with wonder, but a fair few give us the heebie jeebies too. Now, yes, we realize that this pic is simply a school of fish swimming in a formation that accidentally looks like a giant skull with glowing eyes and a gaping black hole of a mouth. However, knowing what something is in the cold light of day doesn’t mean we wouldn’t freak the Hell out if we saw this while on a dive in the Caribbean! It’s enough to give you nightmares!

The sea is full of sunken crafts just begging to be explored; some were even put there on purpose as tourist attractions! In 2017 a C-130 Hercules warplane was intentionally scuttled in the seas of Aqaba, Jordan: this image features the dummy pilot in the cockpit. Photographer Gavin Anderson told the Destinations guide, “The plane was sunk in 17m, close to the M42 Duster tank and within reach of the Al Sharouk shipwreck, making one heck of a dive if you're tech trained, as you can hit three wrecks in one go!”

We always knew polar bears could swim, but we didn’t always know quite how far they’re capable of going. Then in 2011 researchers attached a GPS collar to a female bear in Alaska and found that she swam in freezing cold water for nine days — 232 hours to be exact — without a break! Zoologist George M. Durner said, “We are in awe that an animal that spends most of its time on the surface of sea ice could swim constantly for so long in water so cold. It is truly an amazing feat.”

This image of a cormorant bird hunting for baitfish in the waters off southern California was taken beneath a looming oil rig. Controversially, a similar photo was exhibited by the Natural History Museum in 2016 with text stating, “Drilling for oil is not generally considered beneficial for wildlife, yet oil rigs can provide shelter and a rich food supply for many animals, including Brandt’s cormorants.” It was later discovered the museum had signed a contract with a Danish oil company preventing it from pointing out the oil industry’s negative impact on marine life.

This diver isn’t swimming through the ruins of an ancient civilization which was buried beneath the waves centuries ago, although it sure looks that way. This is actually an underwater art installation in the waters of the Museo Subacuatico de Arte in Isla Mujeres, Mexico. Yes, that’s right: an underwater museum! How cool is that? The sculptures were created by artist Jason deCaires Taylor and are made from materials which actually help foster coral life.

We like to imagine this California sea lion is yelling at the photographer about something very important: perhaps the acidification of our oceans? You see, more and more waters are absorbing too much carbon dioxide from the air due to global warming, which erodes anything made from calcium such as seashells and coral reefs. Kelp forests, such as the one in this image, help fight this because kelp absorbs this carbon dioxide, increasing the pH of the seawater around it.

Jellyfish have got to be one of the most intriguing — if mildly terrifying — denizens of the deep. For starters, they’re technically not even “fish” at all. Fish have skeletons and breathe through gills; jellyfish are invertebrates and “breathe” by absorbing oxygen through membranes. They’re also made of 95 percent water and have no eyes, no hearts, and no brains. Oh, and they likely pre-date dinosaurs, having been a fixture of Earth’s oceans for more than 500 million years! 

This curious sea turtle is swimming among the statues in Mexico’s Museo Subacuatico de Arte and it makes for a truly enthralling, yet surreal, photo. Depressingly, six of the seven known species of sea turtle are under threat of extinction, due to a variety of man-made and environmental factors. Sea pollution is a huge factor, as are overfishing, global warming, and coastal development. Disturbingly, though, there are still huge numbers purposely killed for humans to eat and use their shells to make jewelry.

These red whip corals make for a truly unique image which would be difficult to explain to a non-diver. Amusingly, Scuba Diving magazine’s Patrick Webster wrote about how to reply to the question, “What do you see down there?” from a layman. He answered, “Kind sir, what don’t you see down there? Today it was the astounding algal amphitheater of a giant kelp forest — but at any given time around this water world it could be a glorious garden of colorful corals; or… sea stacks plunging into the abyss and covered in sheer delight!”

For the ocean to stay as luminescent and beautiful as this photo, we humans need to take stock of our actions. Diver Samaras told Insider, “The oceans are a living organism. They affect and are affected by human activity. Unfortunately, overfishing, pollution, traffic, plastic, and global warming are contributing to the change.” He added, “The signs are loud and clear but unfortunately humanity will learn from the mistakes when it will be too late, unless we change our habits and way of thinking. It's time to start respecting this planet.”

This swarm of thimble jellyfish might be spellbinding, but we’d probably keep our distance. Why? Well, because thimble jellyfish give birth to larvae which have become known over the years as “sea lice.” If your skin is already crawling at the mention of that name, it should be: sea lice are super-small and impossible for humans to see in water, and they’ve been known to sting. They’re so tiny that people don’t even feel pain from a sting; they just develop a nasty rash within 24 hours!

Can you imagine the eerie, unnerving feeling you’d get from diving around this statue? The melancholy expression, the blind eyes covered in coral: it’s almost like coming across a drowned sailor floating in the sea. Of course, it’s actually part of the underwater museum in Mexico, which is split into two areas. Salon Nizuc, which snorkellers can reach, is at 4 meters deep, while Salon Machonesh is 8 meters down and can be more easily accessed by scuba divers.

Now, call us crazy, but doesn’t this porcupine fish look like he’s happy to see the photographer? Is he… smiling? Can fish smile? Well, according to the Fishing Advisor website, “It is possible to see a fish ‘smile’ from time to time, even if it is quite rare.” But, they add, “At the risk of disappointing some people, what we take for a smile in fish is rather a sign of fear, submission, or defense. It is an automatic behavior like the smile of a newborn baby who smiles from birth to be protected by its parents.”

This mermaid statue, reaching up for some mystery sailor to come rescue her, is in a mountain lake in Bavaria. Although, given that the statue is in Germany and their most famous mermaid myth is Lorelei, maybe she’s actually beckoning the sailor to his doom! You see, the tale goes that Lorelei was a beautiful woman who drowned herself in the Rhine river after her lover cheated on her. She then transformed into a half-woman, half-fish siren who would lure fishermen to their deaths.

The red handfish — named because of its hand-like fins that are used to push it along the seabed — is one of the rarest species on Earth. In fact, they’re so rare that, when a community was found in Australia in 2018, it doubled the population! Diver Antonia Cooper told website Science Alert, “We were diving for approximately three-and-a-half hours, and at about the two-hour mark we were all looking at each other thinking this is not looking promising… I was half-heartedly flicking algae around when, lo and behold, I found a red handfish!”

Exploring the deep and enjoying sights such as this school of yellow-tailed snappers is a real source of serenity for many divers. Meghan Heaney-Grier, a diving educator and conservationist, told Diver magazine, “That for me is the place I can recharge and refuel. It is the only place, really, where I can fully cut out the noise of the world around, quiet my inner voice — and just tap back in, connect with myself and the place I love most on the planet.” She added, “It is humbling, awe inspiring, and being down there reminds me that I am part of something so much bigger than myself.”

This beautiful pink object may look like an undersea flower, but it’s actually a sea anemone, a predatory animal which clings to the coral. They have tentacles which look like leaves, and they’ll grab at passing fish to inject them with a powerful toxin, before pulling them in to be eaten. Amazingly, though, the clownfish — as pictured here swimming nearby — is immune to this poison. It lives in a symbiotic relationship with the anemone, hiding from predators within its tentacles!

To most people, the idea of encountering a giant octopus in its natural habitat is frightening. It doesn’t have to be, though, as Canadian diver Andrea Humphreys told The Guardian in 2022. She was able to film an octopus giving her affection, revealing, “It was just crawling on my camera, crawling on my lips, giving me a hug. These huge tentacles were up over my face and mask. Every time I backed away from it, the octopus just kept coming towards me. And it was just so amazing and inspiring.”

These beady-eyed customers are moray eels pictured in the Andaman Sea, part of the Indian Ocean. Morays have a bit of a dicey reputation, as plenty of divers have been bitten by their powerful jaws over the years. As with a lot of wild animals, though, they aren’t inherently aggressive, and only tend to attack humans if they are startled, feel threatened, or if the diver has made the mistake of feeding them! We reckon it’s probably best to just admire them from a distance.

Underwater photographer Kin Soon Cheong told Oceanographic magazine that his favorite type of coral to take pictures of is lettuce coral. He explained, “Agaricia agaricites, commonly known as lettuce coral or tan lettuce-leaf coral, are found in shallow tropical waters. Its colour is usually brown, some are yellow, but I have also seen some in a purple colour. But its colour is not the most impressive characteristic: its shape, texture, numerous layers, and relatively big size make lettuce coral colonies stand out among other corals.”

Divers often photograph glowing undersea creatures — such as this striped shrimp — with bewitching bioluminescent displays that are a feast for the eyes. Eddie Widder, a marine biologist, told the Unexplained podcast, “There was just all of this flashing and glowing and sparkle all around me. You’re not viewing it at a distance. You’re in the center of the display. In fact, you’re part of it because any movement you make triggers flashes all around you.” 

In 1946 the USS Saratoga — an aircraft carrier which served the Pacific fleet during WWII — was deemed not battleworthy and was put to use testing the effects of an atomic bomb on ships. It was sunk by an undersea blast, and now is a diving attraction in Bikini Atoll, just off the Marshall Islands. This pic was taken of its anchor hawse hole, covered in seven decades-worth of barnacles and sea detritus. Is it us or does it look like the gaping maw of some horrifyingly enormous fish monster?

Diving with manta rays is an incredible experience, as evidenced by this photo. Diver Emily Krak told the PADI travel blog, “The ethereal rays moved through the ocean with such grace, ease, and precision that they almost appeared to be flying through the sea, using their pectoral fins as wings. First there were two, then six, and before I knew it there were 23 mantas swimming from every direction — we had gotten extremely lucky. They were elegant; swooping, back-flipping, and moving in mesmerizing patterns. The gentle giants were acrobats putting on a show for us, and everyone was captivated.”

This group of spotted dolphins swimming together is a picture of harmony. In truth, that’s not unusual for dolphins, who have been known to be a lot friendlier to interlopers than other animals. In 2013 researchers in the Bahamas witnessed a group of ten spotted dolphins venturing into the territory of the dolphins they were studying. They expected them to fight off these intruders but, instead, they welcomed them in. Over the next few years, the scientists witnessed the community integrate even further, believing there may have even been some mating!

Upon laying eyes on this fascinating image, you may ask, “Why are you showing us a photo of a big fish devouring a tiny one?” Well, the answer is we’re not doing that: this is actually a cleaner wrasse performing its natural duties! You see, as per magazine National Geographic, “They get their name from the unique role they have on the reef — nibbling dead skin, mucus, and parasites off other, usually much larger fish.” This little guy is actually doing the Harlequin Sweetlips fish a big favor!

Here’s a cool way of gaining a sense of scale to judge how big shipwrecks can be. Just look at how tiny the scuba diver seems next to the huge shape emerging from the gloom. For those not familiar with what goes on underneath a ship, we're looking at a mighty propellor. It's easy to forget just how big ships really are, but the scale is clear in this enchanting underwater shot. Each individual blade looks bigger than the diver, never mind the whole thing! The picture was taken in the depths of the Red Sea, which has gained something of a reputation for the staggering number of wrecked vessels along its bed.

Imagine taking a dive into the seas around Japan and China and encountering this monster! This is a Nomura jellyfish, which can reach a diameter of 6’6” and can weigh more than 440 pounds. To make things even scarier, their stings can be really bad. At best, they’ll be painful to experience, but at worst they’ll be fatal. Japanese authorities consider the Nomura jellyfish’s presence in their waters to be a big problem. There have even been attempts to promote them as an unusual delicacy, so as to encourage hunting.

Ocean sunfish are huge fish, sometimes reaching around 14 feet in height and 10 feet in width. These very strange-looking creatures are said to weigh more than any other bony fish, tipping the scales at around 5,000 pounds — heavier than a car! Other fish species, including certain sharks, can be heavier, but they are classified as cartilaginous fish, not bony fish. Plus, sunfish lay the most eggs of any other animal! They may lay up to 300 million eggs at a time, which is more than any other vertebrate. Wow.

The darkest depths of the ocean are home to some pretty bizarre creatures. Some of these animals are scary, while others are just a little odd. Meet the barreleye, a fish with a completely transparent skull. If you take a closer look, you’ll notice two green balls in the center of its head. Incredibly, these are the fish’s eyes! Also appropriately known as spook fish, barreleyes have the advantage of being able to point their eyes upwards and spot incoming dangers from above through their see-through heads. Weird, but cool...

Providing that you don’t get too close, jellyfish can be truly majestic creatures to watch under the water. This is a Pacific Sea Nettle jellyfish, and it tends to live in the eastern Pacific Ocean of Canada and North America. Their distinctive ‘bells’, often a golden-brown or reddish color, can grow to be bigger than one meter in diameter, and their tentacles can trail at nearly five meters long. They’ve become very popular aquarium attractions due to their brightly colored appearance, and they’re pretty mesmerizing to watch.