The practice of underwater photography is booming in the Canary Islands and photographers provide very valuable and interesting information to the Marine Environment Observers Network of the Government of the Canary Islands. That is why for some years now RedPROMAR has been collaborating with the Canary Islands Federation of Underwater Activities through its Scientific and Sustainability Committee, adding information in the form of records on the platform, reinforcing the visibility of FEDECAS's actions and strengthening the link between the community of underwater photographers and the Network.
In terms of marine biodiversity in the Canary Islands and the contribution of this collaboration in the 2024 season, records of enormous value of species of interest are of note. These include introduced species, protected species, thermophilic species that reach the Canary Islands by their own means due to the warming of the oceans, species of fishing interest, cryptic species linked to important ecosystems such as the Sebadal, etc. During the 2024 season, around 500 sightings have been registered through the FEDECAS Scientific and Sustainability Committee as a result of the images taken during various competitions in the categories of photosub, adapted photosub diving and freediving photosub diving.
1️⃣RedPROMAR special prizes in the island underwater photography competitions: the RedPROMAR team selected one photograph from each of the four island underwater photography competitions of the season; this was called the "RedPROMAR special prize" and the photographs were chosen according to the relationship with the main themes of RedPROMAR: introduced species, elasmobranchs, early warning, protected species, species linked to sensitive ecosystems and of importance in the biodiversity of the Canary Islands' sea, illustration of biological/ecological examples, curiosities, etc. The species selected for the "RedPROMAR Special Award" were:
- Sebaceous bloodsucker (Opeatogenys cadenati), as a cryptic species, associated with sebadales, a habitat of tremendous ecological importance in the marine ecosystems of the Canary Islands. An image of Tenerife.
- Pejepeine (Xirychtys novacula), as a regulated species for fishing. A whole image in Gran Canaria and a detail of the scales in La Palma.
- Fire worm (Hermodice carunculata), a species popular in the media in recent months due to proliferations in some parts of Spain, but which has been present in the Canary Islands for decades and does not pose a significant risk to humans or to the marine environmental balance of the Canary Islands. Image of Fuerteventura.
2️⃣RedPROMAR gift to the winning teams of the Canary Islands Inclusive Photosub Championship: this year, as a novelty, informative materials to help with identification and support for the practice of diving have been provided to the winners in the Canary Islands Adapted Diving Championship to promote awareness of marine biodiversity and reinforce the link between this incipient sector and RedPROMAR.
3️⃣Prizes to the best valued species by coefficients in the 2024 season and the 2023 Federation Cup:
RedPROMAR's collaboration with this category is a more mature collaboration that provides a large amount of information due to its main objectives: to find and photograph the largest number of different species of fish in a given place over 5 hours. The result of this category is a list of species present in a place linked to a difficulty coefficient that gives the species an added value depending on the number of participants who have been able to successfully find and photograph that species during the competition.
Thanks to the excellent work of the Freediving Committee, the Scientific and Sustainability Committee and Club La Barqueta de La Palma, the sightings are uploaded to the RedPROMAR platform after each competition. The images are associated with each of the corresponding species, after validation by the RedPROMAR team in conjunction with the Scientific and Sustainability Committee team. In this way, a list of the species present in the competition areas over time is recorded.
RedPROMAR collaborates with gifts to the awarded species according to the quality of the photographs and the level of difficulty: coefficient 1 for species photographed by the majority of the participants; coefficient 1.5 for species photographed by two thirds of the participants; and coefficient 2 for those species that have been photographed by only one third of the participants.
Specifically, we have collaborated in the following freediving competitions:
- Federation Cup. Radazul
- Tenerife Island Championship (two rounds). El Porís and Alcalá
- La Palma Island Championship. S. C. La Palma
- Gran Canaria Island Championship. Agaete
- Canary Islands Championship. Alcalá
Congratulations to all the participants and our special thanks to FEDECAS and its Image Committees, Inclusive Diving, Cazafotosub and Scientific and Sustainability for their collaboration...here's to more collaborations of this kind in 2025!!!
🌊 This project is co-financed by the European Union as part of the Canary Islands ERDF Programme 2021-2027.