The winning image from this year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition captures a camouflage grouper releasing a milky cloud of eggs and sperm into the water.

Laurent Ballesta, a French underwater photographer and biologist, captured the image. For the past five years, Ballesta and his team have returned to the same lagoon in French Polynesia to witness the annual spawning event, which occurs only around the full moon in July.

They were joined after dark by hundreds of grey reef sharks, which were hunting the groupers in packs. Ballesta captured the image, which he named Creation, in the midst of the chaos.