Award-winning underwater photos show haunting wrecks of warships and sunken planes
The Underwater Photographer of the Year contest highlights compelling underwater images.
The wrecks category features photos of wrecked warships and sunken planes.
The winning wreck photo shows a ship that sank when it hit a reef in Egypt in 1985.
The Underwater Photographer of the Year competition announced the winners of its 2025 contest, highlighting the most compelling images from beneath bodies of water around the world.
Photographers from 28 countries submitted 6,750 entries. Winners were chosen by a panel of judges in 13 categories, including the wrecks category, which reveals the haunting remains of sunken vessels around the world.
The commended, highly commended, and winning photos in the wrecks category show sunken ships from World War I and World War II as well as submerged aircraft.
Here are the top 10 photos of wrecks from this year's contest.
Jean-Baptiste Cazajous photographed the wreck of the Togo, a coal transport ship sunk by a mine explosion at the end of World War I in 1918.
Cazajous encountered a school of fish swirling around the hull of the wrecked ship in Cavalaire-sur-Mer, France. The photo was highly commended in the wrecks category.
Jantina Scheltema photographed a sunken twin-motor Piper PA-60 Aerostar plane floating underwater in Germany.
The photo, which was commended in the wrecks category, was taken in Kreidesee Hemmoor, where the plane's owner purposefully sank it to serve as a diving site.
"I love how surreal this scene feels — the airplane flying through the water column, paired with a diver," Scheltema wrote. "It invites you to question: which one doesn't belong, the plane or the person? This is the paradox that I hoped to capture."
Renee Capozzola titled this photo "Sunburst Shipwreck."
Taken off the coast of Brisbane, Australia, Capozzola's split-level image shows a school of fish swimming beneath a shipwreck at sunset. It was commended in the 2025 photography competition.
"This image transports me straight to this wreck with the distinctive bow bathed in evening light, with an attractive school of monos beneath the surface, adding additional interest to the scene," a judge wrote of her photo.
In this commended image, Martin Broen dove into the control room of the Rio de Janeiro wreck in Micronesia's Truk Lagoon.
The Rio de Janeiro was a passenger and cargo liner that sank during Operation Hailstone in 1944, when the US Navy attacked Japanese forces at Truk Lagoon and sank 200,000 tons of shipping, according to the US Naval Institute.
"In the control room of the Rio De Janeiro wreck, I photographed this flooded maze filled with machinery and gauges," Broen wrote.
The Nagano Maru, a Japanese ship, sank with a truck on board during Operation Hailstone.
The Nagano Maru, a passenger and cargo vessel, still has a Nissan flatbed truck in its cargo hold No. 3.
Rick Ayrton worked with another diver to photograph the wreck. The image was highly commended in the Underwater Photographer of the Year contest.
Alex Dawson's image of the SS Carthage from World War I was highly commended in the 2025 contest's wrecks category.
The SS Carthage was sunk by the submarine U-21 on July 4, 1915. It sits off the coast of Turkey at a depth of 84 meters, or 276 feet.
"SS Carthage is one of the most well-preserved wrecks in the Mediterranean, characterized by its tall superstructure and all its detail," Dawson wrote.
The Jura collided with another ship and sank in Lake Constance off the coast of Switzerland in 1864.
The position of the rudder indicates that the crew tried to steer hard to the starboard, or right, side before the wreck, the photographer Frank Aron wrote.
"Even 150 years later this wooden wreck is nearly completely preserved, giving divers a clear idea of what happened during the collision," Aron wrote of the highly commended photo.
Dawson's photo of a former coast guard boat won third place in the wrecks category.
The Sahil Guvenlik SG115 was sunk at a depth of 35 meters, or about 115 feet, for recreational diving in Kas, Turkey.
Wojciech Dopierala was the runner-up with a photo of a sunken Lockheed Martin L1011 Tristar plane off the coast of Jordan.
Dopierala took the photo while freediving in the Red Sea.
"I love the fresh images that freediving photography is bringing to underwater photography as a whole," one judge wrote. "Creating such a perfect composition and moment takes particularly high skills when both photographer and model are on breath-hold dives."
Dawson's image of Gulf Fleet No. 31 beneath the Red Sea in Egypt took first place in the contest's wrecks category.
Gulf Fleet No. 31 sank in 1985 when it hit a reef in Shaabruhr Umm Qammar.
"When she sank, she got wedged between the reef wall and a small reef, so there is a swim-through under the wreck," Dawson wrote of the ship.
At a depth of about 104 meters, or about 341 feet, it's one of the deepest wrecks featured in the 2025 Underwater Photographer of the Year competition.
"This image is packed with the feeling of adventure, in a finely crafted composition that draws you in with layer upon layer of interest, from foreground corals to the clouds of fish above the wreck," one judge wrote of Dawson's winning photo.
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