Californian photographer and conservationist Octavio Aburto had spent years photographing the school in Cabo Pulmo National Park, Mexico – and had been trying to capture this exact shot for three years. “Together with my friend David Castro, we were diving with a large group of Bigeye travellies at Cabo Pulmo National Park, Mexico. Thousands of fish forming a ball during the reproduction courtship. In the afternoon, these fish congregate to form a large spawning aggregation around the reefs of the National Park”. (Photo and caption by Octavio Aburto)

A surfer braves a large wave at Queenscliff in Sydney, Monday, June 6, 2016. Storms have lashed Australia's easter coast for several days whipping up waves as high as 12 meters (40 feet), which caused serious beach erosion and forced hundreds of coastal residents to evacuate. (Photo by Rick Rycroft/AP Photo)

Actress Sophia Loren teases the hair of critic Gene Shalit in New York, Tuesday, February 20, 1979. During the filming of a segment for the NBC television “Today” show. In the background is a large photograph of Miss Loren. The segment is scheduled for airing later this week. (Photo by Dave Pickoff/AP Photo)

A diver wearing a Santa Claus costume swims with fishes in a large tank during an underwater performance for the upcoming Christmas celebration at Hakkeijima Sea Paradise in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, Japan on December 1, 2022. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

People visit the sunflowers installation, which is a part of the immersive exhibition “Van Gogh Alive” featuring large scale of Van Gogh artworks, produced by Grande Experiences during a media event in Tokyo on January 11, 2024. (Photo by Philip Fong/AFP Photo)

Artist and photographer Spencer Tunick, right, walks past models covering themselves with large leaves, as he talks about his next project at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Thursday, November 24, 2022. Tuncik is expecting to photograph thousands of nude people on Bondi Beach on Saturday. (Photo by Rick Rycroft/AP Photo)

Fishermen are surrounded by green water as they use large nets to catch fish. The workers were pictured trying to find fish below the algae in Rajshahi, Bangladesh in the last decade of February 2024. (Photo by Bipul Ahmed/Solent News & Photo Agency)

“Cassowaries are large, flightless birds related to emus and (more distantly) to ostriches, rheas, and kiwis”, writes Olivia Judson in the September issue of National Geographic magazine. How large? People-size: Adult males stand well over five foot five and top 110 pounds. Females are even taller, and can weigh more than 160 pounds. Dangerous when roused, they’re shy and peaceable when left alone. But even birds this big and tough are prey to habitat loss. The dense New Guinea and Australia rain forests where they live have dwindled. Today cassowaries might number 1,500 to 2,000. And because they help shape those same forests – by moving seeds from one place to another – “if they vanish”, Judson writes, “the structure of the forest would gradually change” too. (Photo by Christian Ziegler/National Geographic)