(KONGSBERG, Norway) — Kongsberg Maritime has selected the winners of The Full Picture Photo and Video Competition, which ran from Aug. 26 until Nov. 30, 2014. With iPad Minis on offer as prizes and the chance for some entries to be used in Kongsberg Maritime marketing activities, the company's international camera user-base submitted a wealth of fantastic underwater stills and video. Visitors to the Kongsberg Maritime booths at this week's Underwater Intervention 2015 in New Orleans and Subsea Expo 2015 in Aberdeen can see some of the best entries on display.
In the end, the judges decided to select two joint winners. Jason White, operations field manager from the Undersea Vehicles Program at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, wins Best Digital Stills Image with a stunning, colourful image of a Caribbean (giant) anemone (Condylactis gigantean) taken at 60 meters using the Kongsberg Maritime OE14-408 digital stills camera. The image was captured on a shakedown cruise with a new sub-Atlantic Mohawk ROV, purchased by the National Marine Sanctuaries Foundation and operated by the university. The shakedown cruise was on the R/V Manta and the team was working with the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary out of Galveston.
The other joint winner was Patrick O'Driscoll, who submitted standard definition video footage from the Kongsberg Maritime OE14-366 color zoom camera acquired using the Irish Marine Institute's ROV Holland 1 during the 2011 Venture expedition, which located a new mid-Atlantic ridge vent field to the north of the Azores in 3,000 meters of water. The footage was featured on the National Geographic "Alien Deep" series and was a major discovery for the expedition, which was led by Professor Andy Wheeler from University College Cork, with partners from the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.
