Claudio Moreno Madrid, Hinehina (ANIMALS 2025)

A dream that never faded, I've spent years working in the water with whales, and the last couple of years, every morning as I woke up, I would say to my partner, "Today we'll see a white whale!" This little ritual became part of our routine, a hopeful joke, though deep down I never stopped believing it would happen sooner than later. One day the dream came true!! We were working as guides in Tonga, every day hoping for this encounter, until the day arrived, we drove to the southern part of Vava'u, far from the islands, maybe around 100m deep water and the wind was blowing 20knots, so the conditions out of the water were a bit rough, but soon we got into the water everything changed, this glowing thing was shining from miles away, the water was super clear giving a sensation of infinity looking to the deep, the whales were just chilling around and in some moments the mum was swimming up to us with her pretty unique baby, this completely white calf. Both full of grace giving us the best gift that you can get in the ocean, a memory for the rest of our lives. It isn’t confirmed but at the moment the studies say that only 1 in 40000 whales, are completely white, so I have nothing more than to be grateful to have the luck and privilege to freeze some of these moments with my camera and be able to create one of my best black & white photos ever.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.