Mauro Barberis, Musketeers (ANIMAL & NATURE 2022)

The Musketeers. These 3 French Polynesian dogs redefined the canine race for me. I am an underwater photographer and freediver, I was in French Polynesia trying to capture pictures of Whales and other marine wildlife in one of the bays on the west of Tahiti, a particularly current heavy bay called "Pā'ea". One morning, a calf and its mother were quite close to the break so I decided to fight the currents to try to get from shore past the break to capture the calf. The water was flowing from the lagoon into the bay on slack high tide, a particularly rough morning. The nearest beach with access to this bay is private, available only to the locals that own the surrounding houses, one of which was hosting me. These 3 dogs belonged to one of the locals, and pretty much ruled the private beach where I was staying. They would play with rocks instead of sticks, very tough animals. And they would follow me Everywhere while I was on the beach. But that morning, they followed me deep into the bay, at least 50 metres in. I kept having to swim back to shore to bring them back and unfortunately I missed the calf.. I was too concerned with one of the dogs drowning... Ha. I've never been so wrong in my life. They kept following me in and out of the water, fighting the currents each time, until I stopped worrying.. that day they were determined to not let me dive on my own, following me even where the water was 10-15 metres deep. If they'd get tired at any point, they would rest on the beach for 5 minutes, and come straight back in. I was by myself, concerned because of the murky waters, the currents, the grey sharks.. but I didn't fear anymore once the 3 musketeers embraced me as D'Artagnan. Adding as 4th image just a drone shot of the bay for reference of the currents. Today I only want to tell the story of these musketeers, no other wildlife.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.