2nd Place Reefscape

Pedro Carrillo

"Krypton"

Pedro won a gift certificate worth $1,000 for Guadalupe or Socorro liveaboard trips from Nautilus Explorer and Belle Amie

The Story:  I had visited several times a dive spot named “La Rapadura”, one of the many marvels that the Canary Island´s waters have to offer to the adventurous diver.

This place is really unique as you can admire a spectacular basaltic formation located between 15 and 50 meters underwater. Such structure, called “lava casting with columnar disjunction” originates when an eruption´s lava flow contacts the ocean, cools and solidifies; as a result of the process, the lava contracts and fractures, but following a regular pattern in the form of prisms, usually hexagonal.

In that particular dive, I asked my trusty underwater model (Yolanda Garcia) to come along with me to try to picture the greatness of the place, as a diver would greatly enhance the chances of conveying the sense of magnitude its deserves.

We spent some time at +40m trying to work upon the deeper part of the structure, but I was not really getting what I had in mind. As we slowly made our way back to the surface, I spotted that the upper part of the reef had a really interesting shape, much like the Krypton planet in the Superman movie. With time to work the subject in the much shallower area (aprox 18m), I came with this photo, that I really like as I have never seen anything similar taken at La Rapadura.

Location:  Canary Island, Spain

Camera:  Nikon D300 and Nikkor 10.5mm with Seacam Housing

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