Congratulations to Thug Rigby for making the finals @ ShutterTramp Magazine!!! His little expedition shooting the great trans-Pacific migration of the leaf-rafting tanks may have really paid off!!!

The grand prize is a new Puntar 1.5 Megapixel Camera with 2x Optical Zoom--let's wish him luck!!!

I'll be uploading the entry files as he sends them to me. His link is slow as he's weathering a tropical storm in some tent out there somewhere.

A couple Blue Leaf-Rafting Tanks drifting past a town towards the ocean.

This lucky fisherman will get several days worth of food and probably a sizable amount of explosives from just this one catch.

Villages all over wait for this time of the year with great anticipation.

Even though many thousands never reach the sea, many push through just because of the numbers. From here their great trans-Pacific voyage begins, where they will drift on their little rafts all the way to Mexico, where they will breed and hopefully, return to Pukapuka.

If you look closely at the picture below, one of the little rafting tanks has taken a flower along for company on the long voyage. In all likelyhood, this little bit of extra weight will spell its doom.

From high above, the great migration turns the ocean a deep green. Below, a scientist readies a tranquilizer gun from a helicopter to sedate one of the blue-leaf rafting tanks. Working quickly, they will attach a number of devices which will collect the tank's coordinates, the wind speed, the tides, and even the tank's internal body temperature as it travels. Little is known about the route the tanks take to get to Mexico, and a large debate rages if the whole migration is for breeding in the first place.