Laurent Ballesta (France) goes looking for horseshoe crabs in the protected waters of Pangatalan Island, the Philippines.
Moving slowly across the seabed, a horseshoe crab leaves a furrow in the soft mud with its stiff tail. Laurent’s dive assistant spotted a double trail and moved quickly to track this pair preparing to mate.
During mating, the male horseshoe crab clasps the much larger female with its hooked appendages, and together they move slowly across the seabed. The two then come ashore, where the female lays thousands of eggs, which are then fertilised by the male. Afterwards they head back underneath the waves to feed on the mud plains.
France
Laurent has authored 13 photography books on underwater wildlife. As co-founder of Andromède Océanologie, he’s been leading major expeditions for 10 years. He illustrates the underwater world as both a naturalist and an artist, whether that be capturing the first images of a coelacanth taken by a diver at a depth of 120 metres, documenting 700 sharks off Fakarava hunting at night or photographing the deepest and longest dive in Antarctica.
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