This is the best underwater photo in the world in 2020

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Grand Prize Winner: Evans Baudin's photo of a whale shark giving a friendly ride to various suckling fish won first prize in Scuba Diving magazine's 2020 Through Your Lens Underwater Photo Contest.

Evans Baudin / Scuba Diving magazine

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Macro: First prize in this category went to Jeffrey Haines, for this photo of a seahorse.

"You never know what you are going to find when you dive in dark water," he says.

Jeffrey Haines / Scuba Diving magazine

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Behavior: "I'm not sure if the seahorse mistakenly grabbed the pipefish with its tail, mistaking it for a patch of grass, or if it was deliberate," says winner Jules Casey.

Jules Casey / Scuba Diving magazine

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Wide angle: "On the surface at the entrance of the cenote, I had no idea what kind of space was under the small pool. Only when I descended and positioned myself outside the sunlit area, the dark space was revealed," he says winner Martin Strmiska.

Martin Strmiska / Scuba Diving magazine

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Compact camera: "This young Wonderpus was sitting on a palm leaf, a very nice subject to be tested on," says winner Tobias Friedrich.

Tobias Friedrich / Scuba Diving magazine

(CNN) -

Don't worry.

Those sucker fish are just traveling in the mouth of that whale shark.

This incredible image won the Grand Prize in Scuba Diving magazine's 2020 Underwater Photography Contest, an annual competition that celebrates the best photographs captured on the seven seas.

The Through Your Lens contest, now in its sixteenth year, attracted 2,636 entries from around the world.

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Evans Baudin, in Baja California, Mexico, took the winning image while on an expedition in June 2020 to document marine life and the effects of reduced maritime traffic due to COVID-19.

There are four contest categories and the top prize in the Behavior category went to Australian Jules Casey's photograph of a marlin fighting a short-headed seahorse in Victoria's Port Phillip Bay.

"This interaction lasted only about 10 seconds, which was long enough to prepare the shot," says Casey.

A seahorse also brought luck to Jeffrey Haines of West Palm Beach, Florida, who won the Macro category with his image of one of the little marine inhabitants in a sargassum ensemble.

"Perseverance and concentration are the keys to success in finding your topic as you go along," says Haines.

Tobias Friedrich from Anilao, Philippines, won the Compact Camera category thanks to a colorful shot of a young wonderpus octopus resting on a palm leaf.

"As a SeaLife camera brand ambassador, I always carry a DC2000 with me, in addition to my DSLR setup, to take some side shots," he says.

An image of a diver descending into the dark depths of a sinkhole in Puerto Morelos, Mexico, won the Wide Angle category.

"My friend, hanging above that cloud and illuminated by the sun's rays, looked so small that I spent the entire dive shooting from a distance, trying to capture the little diver in that huge space," says photographer Martin Strmiska.

As of November 1, registrations for the 2021 Through Your Lens competition begin.