By Dean Murray via SWNS

A bird's-eye view of four sharks and their schooling prey has been announced as the winner of the Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition 2024.

The competition, run in association with the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) this year, celebrates incredible images that shed new light on hidden scientific phenomena around us.

The competition invited entries across five scientific categories: Astronomy, Behaviour, Earth science and climatology, Ecology and environmental science and

Microimaging

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This year's overall winner, from the Behavior category, is The hunt from above by Dr. Angela Albi, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour, who studies the predator-prey interactions of sharks and schools of fish.

"Just after sunrise or before sundown, the shallow waters of the Maldives become a clear, see-through surface," she said. "These are also the moments when we best observe the interactions between reef sharks and their prey."

Hugh Turvey, Science Committee Chair at the Royal Photographic Society, was a member of this year's judging panel.

"From the photographers' bird's-eye perspective, the raw instincts of nature come alive, as the school of fish move in almost perfect synchrony then split to avoid the sharks," he said. "The contrast between the collective movements of the fish and the sharks' calculated group pursuit perfectly demonstrates the delicate balance between predator and prey."

The overall winner takes home a grand prize of £1000, and winners of each category receive £500. This year, category winners are also awarded a year's membership to the Royal Photographic Society.

The winners of the four remaining categories were selected out of more than 500 entries.