Frank Schneider, Marty Snyderman, Bill Acker, Ray Bullion and Masa Michishiro,  your 2012 Manta Fest presenters and event host handed out the prizes and awards to the top photographers of this year’s event. The task wasn’t easy, there were a lot of outstanding photo submissions but this is how it all finally shook down.

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Winner, Best of Show

Anke Rohrbach was presented with the best of show contest winning photograph of Yap’s grey reef sharks at Vertigo. This is the the photograph that was selected as the contest winner, taken at a shark feed dive on the Philippine Sea reef. The prize was a 16 day liveaboard trip with Dive Damai and is worth more than $10,000. When you win Bill’s photography contest, you get something special. In this case it’s a dive cruise that’s never been done before, sailing and diving from Indonesia through all of Micronesia winding up back in Yap. Anke will be living in luxury on a carte blanche ticket with a boutique sailing operation diving some of the most treasured waters there are in the Pacific.

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First Place DSLR, Ken Sutherland

Ken’s photo of a flatworm free swimming in the water column delivered first place in DSLR and he received a new Mares Icon HD dive air-integrated dive computer, handed to him by Stefan Michl himself.

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Second Place DSLR, Uwe Nie

The photographers were allowed to submit their photos that fell into a few content categories.

• Big Animals
• Macro
• People and Culture
• Reef Scenics

This is a photo of the private Manta Ray Bay beach on Maap. During the week, it wasn’t just dive boats rolling off the dock, there were land tours, kayak tours and the standard “what would you like to do” Manta Ray Bay policy. There was some birding action, fruit bat photo excursions, hikes, beach tours and yap-size road trips around the island’s cultural spots. Uwe won second place with his photo of tropical paradise and won a week hotel and dive package back at Manta Ray Bay. He titled the photo “Relaxed”, which is one of the keywords thrown around when talking about the energy here in Yap. His photo about sums it up…  

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Third Place DSLR, Judy Bennett

This was definitely one of the favorite photographs of the event, Judy was shooting black tip reef sharks circling at the surface of the Vertigo shark feed dive. The judging was looking for content, technical aspects, presentation as well as post-production attributes when scoring these images.

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Point and Shoot Winners

Borris Mitchell won first place with a cultural photo entry of Yap stone money. Another Mares Icon HD was handed out by Stefan for the point and shoot first place pic.

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Get Involved

This is a uniquely fun event for all levels of divers photographers and where pro photography, world class warm water diving and cool people from around the world enjoy the vacation pace and unmistakable relaxed atmosphere that Yap and Bill Acker provide. Mares will be a big part of Manta Fest 2013 and you can count on a custom grand prize that you won’t find anywhere else. Several of the participants didn’t leave the property without already reserving their spot for next year. Now is a good time to lock in your presence at the 2013 Manta Fest party in Yap.