2017 Photo of the Year

Congratulations to Kirill Egorov, whose photo was chosen for the 2017 GUE Image of the Year!

About the site:

The photo was taken during the summer 2016 GUE/NOAA collaboration to explore wrecks from the WWII Battle of the Atlantic. During this project we documented three ships located in the waters off the coast of North Carolina, the German submarine U-576, US cargo ship MV Bluefields, and US patrol boat YP-389. The wreck lies in 320 ft/97 m of water 32 miles offshore of the island of Ocracoke. The YP-389 is a 100-foot long fishing vessel that was repurposed as a patrol boat in World War II and sank in battle with most of its live munitions still aboard and armed..

About the photo:

Due to weather conditions (there were three tropical storms sweeping through the Carolinas at the same time) we had just two diving days instead of the planned week. This short time period, combined with the small size of the targets and possible current (the wreck is conveniently positioned on the edge of Labrador and Gulfstream), I was not very hopeful.

The first day of diving did not raise my spirits, as it took us almost 5 hours to locate the wreck and set up the upline and then only Jarrod Jablonski and Richard Lundgren had time to jump in for a short reconnaissance dive.

The next day’s weather forecast predicted non-diving conditions but we still decided to give it a go. We were rewarded by calm seas, no current, and great overall conditions. Almost an hour of bottom time allowed Richard Lundgren to gather material for a full photogrammetric model of the shipwreck while I managed to shoot close to 240 photos with a help of my very patient models, Jarrod Jablonski and Jongmoon Lee. That was an unexpected success, which proves that in wreck diving, luck is everything .