Truth, beauty, and a perfect view

Angela Albi wins top prize in Royal Society photo competition

An aerial view of sharks meandering through a meadow of fish has earned Angela Albi the highest award in a scientific photo competition. Albi’s photo was named “Overall Winner” in the 2024 Royal Society Photographic Competition. To create the winning photo, Albi selected and edited a still from a drone video taken in the Maldives as part of her research into predator-prey interactions. The research is part of the Department of Collective Behavior at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) and the Cluster of Excellence Collective Behaviour at the University of Konstanz.

On an early morning in 2024, a drone hovered seven meters above a coral reef in the Maldives. Close by on a sandy beach, the drone’s pilot, August Paula, watched the small control screen that displayed what the drone’s camera was recording. He saw crystal water, a glass-smooth surface, and not a single spot of glare. All this converged into an astonishingly perfect view of the underwater drama that had brought him and fellow scientists from Germany to this chain of coral atolls in the Indian Ocean.

The scientists were in the Maldives to observe young blacktip reef sharks and the baitfish that are both their protection and prey. As juveniles, the sharks spend time together in shallow sandy flats where they swim through massive schools of fish; occasionally, they also hunt the fish for food. Because fish schools can be several hundred meters long, the scientists record the shark-fish interactions with a camera onboard a drone that flies up to 35 meters above the water to take in the complete scene.

Sometime after Paula’s drone flight, team member Angela Albi was scrubbing through the day’s footage to prepare it for analysis. But Albi, an avid photographer, saw something shining through the data. Partway through the video, a striking composition emerged from the interplay of sharks and fish. Albi captured a still of the moment, and the resulting image was today named “Overall Winner” in the 2024 Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition.

“In this frame, a shark on the far-left shifts suddenly from swimming calmly within the school to initiating a hunt, its body posture standing out from the others,” says Albi, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Collective Behavior at MPI-AB. What triggers these attacks is unknown, so Albi analyzes videos to study hunting events and the collective response of fish. “Using machine learning and advanced video analysis, we track how sharks hunt and how their schooling prey respond, uncovering the complex dynamics of predator-prey interactions in nature.”

The Royal Society’s photography competition celebrates beautiful images that capture scientific phenomena. A panel of scientists and photographers selects a winning and runner-up photo in five categories, one of which is named the overall winner. Albi’s photo “The hunt from above” won the Behavior category as well as the overall competition, which included photos of ice caps, galaxies and scorpion eyes. The winning photo will appear on the cover of the journal Biology Letters.

Says Albi: “I’m grateful to my whole team. Every member contributed to capturing this unexpected view of a behavior that is normally out of our reach. I’m also deeply honored for the opportunity from the Royal Society to bring the beauty and diversity of animal behavior to more people.”

Albi is part of a team of scientists from the MPI-AB and the University of Konstanz who have been working in the Maldives since 2023. The team, which goes by the name SAFT (Sharks and Fish Together), includes Albi and Paula as well as Luke Costello, Tristan Walter, and Iain Couzin who is an MPI-AB Director and Professor at the University of Konstanz. The SAFT team partner with the local Marine Research and High Education Center (MaRHE) who provide support and expertise for accessing the many tiny islands scattered across the Maldives.

Days on the coral islands are spent locating, and then recording, schools of fish and sharks, which Albi says is no walk on a tropical beach. “Finding the schools can be very hard because they usually can’t be seen from the shore.” The scientists fly drones out to test the waters, or they follow up on alerts from local collaborators who have seen signs of large fish schools. The filming conditions are also rarely postcard-perfect: “It can rain or be very windy,” she says, “so oftentimes the drones can’t fly.” On good flying days, the scientists give themselves the best chance for a clear shot by filming in narrow windows just after sunrise and just before sunset, which reduces the sun’s reflection off the water.

For Albi, the field work is equal parts scientific and artistic. "I love photography, whether it’s analog or digital, above or below water,” she says. The Italian-born scientist began photographing a few years ago, experimenting with a friend on a simple darkroom to develop pinhole photos. She has since expanded into digital art, playing around with an assortment of techniques. A current favorite is chronophotography, which she uses to create mesmerizing sequences of animals in motion—a fitting tool for a researcher of animal behavior.

“Wherever I go, I always have my camera with me. I can’t stand the thought of missing a shot.”