Incredible Photo of Huge Whale Gobbling a Heart-Shaped Bait Ball Wins Ocean Photographer of the Year 2024

The sweeping expanse of Magdalena Bay in Baja California is festooned with chalky crescent-shaped barchan sand dunes, nutrient-rich blue waters, and trails of lush mangroves that provide shelter to sea birds. But every October through January, the inshore waters of this area display a magical sight. In order to scavenge food, reproduce, and defend themselves from predators, billions of sardines cluster together and form shimmery balls that look like gloopy ballerinas dancing underwater. These luxuriant balls of fish pulsate, gyrate, and swirl, often attracting marine predators like Bryde’s whales, humpbacks, orcas, sailfish, makos, blue sharks, tuna, dolphins, sea lions, and sea birds.

The surreal annual event is a part of nearly every diver’s bucket list. During the 2023 sardine run, Spanish photographer, Rafael Fernández Caballero (@rafafdezjr) was capturing dorados and sea lions off the coast of Baja California Sur, just when he caught the bizarre sight of a Bryde’s whale rushing to swallow a ball of sardines. Caballero won the “Ocean Photographer of the Year 2024” competition whose results were announced in September 2024 by the Oceanographer Magazine.

Caballero believes that the ocean is teeming with stories, he said in a video. Since childhood, he has been dipping in deep ocean waters and recording stories of otherworldly creatures indulged in marine buffets, along with his father, a photographer. He has snapped pictures of shoals of Indonesian fish with their glossy, flashy lips. He has hugged sea wolves and filmed iguanas, the wild red dinosaurs foraging for food. Caballero captured a snapshot of the sardine run event in the winning photograph off Mexico’s Pacific Coast in Baja California Sur.

The sinister photograph shows a Bryde’s whale with its pointed dorsal fin and giant head, darting its slender, smoky blue-grey body towards a heart-shaped bait ball of sardines. With its mouth wide open, the whale was about to gobble down the meaty clump when the picture was snapped. “The highlight was this whale coming out of nowhere with its mouth wide open,” Caballero told the magazine. He added that he was lucky to witness the show. “Due to El Niño and warmer temperatures, different species joined the party and I witnessed huge numbers of beautifully colored dorados and large groups of sea lions that were attracted by the bait balls,” said the photographer. 

Reflecting on the phantasmagorical sardine run event, Caballero described how “A feeding frenzy is the biggest show on earth for me. The smallest animals on earth, plankton, attract bait balls of sardines and, in turn, giant whales show up. Caballero’s photo was chosen from more than 15,000 submissions from some of the world’s finest coastal, drone, surf and underwater photographers, according to BBC Discover Wildlife. “The image captures perhaps the most special – and craziest – moment of my life. It fills me with joy having lived this moment – and to have captured the image,” he exclaimed.

Another of his photographs, featuring a giant wild iguana half-submerged in water, also made it to the list of winners. This picture was recorded whilst Caballero was on an adventure through the Galapagos Islands. In the surreal photograph, the “living dinosaur” with golden-brown-colored flesh is perched on an underwater rock, with its lizardlike mouth gazing at the sky, reptilian paws fanned out on the rocky structure, and long tail wriggling in the surrounding pool of turquoise water.

You can follow Rafael Fernández Caballero (@rafafdezjr) on Instagram to receive more ethereal photographs from his diving adventures!