Overall Winner
Fish-seeking gannets torpedo beneath the waves in "Gannet Jacuzzi," the overall winner of the 2012 British Wildlife Photography Awards, announced this week.
Photographer Matt Doggett used dead mackerel to attract the birds in a remote location off northern Scotland.
"I like this image, as almost every stage of the action is captured—gannets entering the water, gannets eyeing up the fish, gannets taking the fish, gannets eating the fish and then finally leaving," Dogget said in a statement. "It looks like chaos, but the gannets know exactly where the other birds are."
Now in its fourth year, the British Wildlife Photography Awards recognize amateur and professional photographers while highlighting the "great wealth and diversity" of British nature. Judged by professional photography experts, the competition is open to all nationalities, but the pictures must have been taken in the United Kingdom.
As for this year's winner, it's a "striking image that manages to capture in parallel the raw power and grace of the diving gannets," judge Greg Armfield of the international conservation organization WWF said in a statement.
(See more gannet pictures, from National Geographic magazine.)
—Ker Than
Best Wildlife Pictures: British Nature Winners 2012
From a cave-diving seal to balletic, and brutal, birds—see gob-smackingly good winners of the British Wildlife Photography Awards.
