This year, 2023, saw the fourth edition of the MARE, an audiovisual competition featuring the best images of the Balearic Sea and the Mediterranean.
MARE received over 1,200 photos by submarine photographers from 11 different nations, divided into three categories: youth, amateur adults, and professional adults.
The prize-winning ceremony was held within the context of the Foro Marino Programme, in the new Maritime Station in Marina Botafoch, in Ibiza Town.
A total of €10,000 in the form of financial rewards and specialist photographic equipment was awarded in 30 prizes to the best images and - for the first time - one public prize.
MARE is an initiative that supports marine conservation in the Balearic Sea and throughout the Mediterranean by means of promoting the visual arts, principally digital underwater photography.
Photography is the perfect way to discover and highlight the seas’ hidden wonders, thanks to its vast palette of colours and light. What’s more, it enables us to document species and habitats, thus providing us with essential information about their current state of conservation.
The winning photos will form part of an itinerant exhibition that will travel the length and breadth of the Balearic Islands over the course of 2024.
As the competition’s organisers pointed out, for the fourth year running, the winning photos reveal highly unusual interactions between species and the extraordinary diversity of marine life in the face of increasing human pressure. The latter includes abandoned boats and fishing nets and the irresponsible disposal of waste.
Aniol Esteban, director of the Fundación Marilles, one of the competition’s main sponsors, had this to say, “These magnificent photos show us the hidden underwater riches around us at the same time as the environmental pressures they are under and the need to cooperate to protect them. Mare celebrates marine life while reminding us of everything we have lost; it’s high time to work together to fill the seas with life and colour again!”
Our congratulations go to all the worthy category winners. Have a browse of our pick of the images from the competition and we’re sure you will agree that the quality was extremely high this year.
