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)

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)

The Lantern Festival in Seoul, South Korea, celebrates Buddha’s birthday. Buddha was born approximately 2,557 years ago; the exact date is unknown, but Buddha’s official birthday is celebrated on the full moon in May in South Korea, which is May 17 this year. Photo: Buddhists march on the street as they prepare for the buddha's birthday in Seoul. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun)

A midnight safari has been caught on camera as wild animals gather in front of a full moon. Photographer Brendon Cremer, 35, snapped the impressive collection of night sky images while in South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana. It can be challenging for even the best photographers to take full control of their camera while ensuring they don’t become the deadly animals' next meal. But this impressive set of images looks both effortless and fierce. Here: A elepant strolls under the milkyway. (Photo by Brendon Cremer/Caters News)

A man feeds a seagull during a record low tide in Saint Malo, western France, March 21, 2015. Towns on France's North Atlantic coast braced for their first giant tide of the millennium on Saturday as the full moon and this week's solar eclipse combined to create an ocean surge not seen since 1997. (Photo by Stephane Mahe/Reuters)

A Buddhist monk lights a candle at Wat Phra Dhammakaya during a ceremony on Makha Bucha Day in Pathum Thani province, north of Bangkok February 22, 2016. Makha Bucha Day honours Buddha and his teachings, and falls on the full moon day of the third lunar month. (Photo by Jorge Silva/Reuters)

“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)