David Herasimtschuk's Image

David Herasimtschuk (USA) is rewarded for his patience when he spots a group of migrating lampreys moving to upriver spawning grounds.

David’s image of a huddling mass of lampreys was many years in the making.

It resulted from a collaboration with a group of conservationists, including Native American biologists, who are committed to returning this fish to the rivers where numbers have greatly declined or the fish have vanished altogether.

The Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission works with four Native American groups to support the protection and restoration of Columbia River basin lamprey, as well as salmon and sturgeon.

Here, the lampreys had paused among boulders before wriggling their way 12 metres (39 feet) up Willamette Falls in Oregon to reach their spawning grounds.

Lampreys start their lives as filter-feeding larvae. They can be buried in the riverbed for up to six years before migrating to the ocean. Here they suck the blood of living fish until sexually mature, then return to the rivers, battling against the current to spawn and die in the headwaters.

Lampreys are survivors of a lineage that split from the earliest jawless vertebrates more than 400 million years ago. Their overall appearance has changed very little since.