Ocean Art 2022: Sea Dragon Dads, Octopus Moms Are the Extreme Marine Parents Featured in Winning Photos [LOOK]

The Ocean Art 2022 underwater photography competition recently announced the winners of the 11th annual competition. On their website, they said that the caliber of winners demonstrates that the globe has entered a new and thrilling post-pandemic period of photography achievement.

It was an extremely close and rigorous competition, with photographers from 96 different nations entering thousands of photographs.

Live Science showcases stunning new photographs from the winners of the Ocean Art 2022 of the Underwater Photography Guide, depicting a common sea dragon dad gliding across a seagrass field with his jewel-like egg clutch and an octopus mom waiting for her eggs to safely hatch.

Super Sea Dragon Dads

A gorgeous new image by PT Hirschfield who shot it in Victoria, Australia, shows a common sea dragon dad drifting through a seagrass meadow with his jewel-like egg clutch in tow. According to the Georgia Aquarium, common sea dragons (Phyllopteryx taeniolatus) live 13 to 20 feet (4 to 6 meters) below the surface though they can also reach up to 160 feet (50 m) deep.

Sea dragons usually start brooding in late July or early August. The eggs begin a stunning deep magenta color, which fades to brown as the baby dragons mature. They are attached to the dad's tail where green or brown algae can develop around, providing further concealment.

Marine biologist Greg Rouse from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego explained to Live Science that eye spots start to appear in each egg after a few weeks.

Male sea dragon parents, unlike other vertebrates, devote time and energy to caring for unhatched eggs. This peculiar brooding mechanism is also seen in closely related taxa like seahorses and pipefish.

Seahorses and certain pipefish have a specialized kangaroo-like pouch to carry their eggs, whereas sea dragons glue their eggs to the underside of their tails. A clutch of sea dragon eggs usually contains between 100 and 180 eggs, depending on the size of the mother.

Octopus Mom Holding Her Brood

Ocean Art's other parent of the year is an octopus holding her brood carefully in her eight arms. The photo, taken by Kat Zhou, shows a stunningly detailed image that earned the best of show award. Zhou identified it as a Caribbean reef octopus (Octopus briareus) and took this photo in the balmy waters off of West Palm Beach, Florida

Cephalopod zoologist Mike Vecchione from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who was not involved in the contest told Live Science that warm water octopus species' eggs develop quickly unlike eggs of colder species. In some cases, octopus moms would hold onto their eggs for years.

But the photographed octopus mom will not have to wait for long for her eggs to hatch. Nonetheless, she must keep an eye on them to keep them safe. During this period, octopus moms neither eat nor care for themselves, which means they are in pretty bad condition by the time the eggs hatch.

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