DATELINE: 2nd November 2001

BG WILDLIFE WINNER
German diving writer and photographer Tobias Bernhard - a regular Diver magazine contributor - has won the BG Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition with a dramatic shot of a grey nurse shark, taken over Beveridge Reef in the South Pacific.
This year the prestigious competition, run by London's Natural History Museum and BBC Wildlife magazine, attracted 19,000 entries from 60 countries. Tobias's grey reef shark thrashed its way to the top of the pile against stiff land-based competition, and it is a great accolade for Tobias to have come out as Overall Winner ahead of so many powerful images drawn from the world's complete animal kingdom, submarine and terrestrial.
Niall Benvie, a wildlife photographer and one of the judges, said: "This picture is loaded with tension; tension between the warm and cool tones and between the viewer and subject.
"The line of the fish is dynamic and the sense of motion adds to the power of the image."
Tobias' picture has now joined 114 other BG Wildlife winning and commended images, from both professional and amateur photographers, now on display at the Natural History Museum, London SW7, until 11 March.
If you can't make it to the exhibition, all exhibited photos are published in a souvenir brochure free with the November issue of BBC Wildlife.
Enquiries - Natural History Museum, 020 7942 5015; competition website - www.nhm.ac.uk/WildPhoto

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