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An oceanic whitetip and passengers, Red Sea, Egypt

If you’ve paid even an ounce of attention while on your scuba diving holidays, you would have noticed the large number of Nordic divers that seem to be taking over the oceans. Not that I blame them, for any area of the world that receives as much snow as they do needs no justification for escaping the misery. Plus, thanks to a nice little social system they have going on up there, many avid divers seem to be doing just fine in order to finance their great escapes, so why not? It’s just so frustrating that so many of them seem to be awesome shooters and divers. I mean, they already have universal health care, access to free education, and clearly innate genes that allow them to be naturals at sports. Enough already!
 

A slower exposure frozen by strobes of an oceanic whitetip shot in the Red Sea, Egypt

Ah, but jealousy is an emotion that is supposedly reserved for a weak mind, and we should of course embrace their superiority, because at least, let’s admit it, many of them are the nicest people on the planet, despite their lack of exposure to vitamin D. In saying that, I guess we should just go ahead and celebrate another Nordic creature, Tommi Kokkola of Finland, whose wide-angle and macro images (which, by the way, he took after spending a lot of time in Southeast Asia, of course) are the result of a mere four years of shooting (no big deal). And if you want to add insult to injury, Tommi mostly shoots on a rEVO rebreather and lives in Taiwan. Need I say more?
 

Moray eel and sun ball, Bunaken, Indonesia
 

Swirling jacks near the Delsan Wreck, Tubbataha, Philippines
 

Reverse ring macro: An ornate coral goby off Anilao, Philippines
 

A hairy red hermit crab, Anilao, Philippines, also shot using reverse ring macro
 

Up close with a threadfin hawfish, Malapascua, Philippines
 

Bigfin reef squid swimming off Lembeh, Indonesia
 

A blue dorid nudibranch, Anilao, Philippines
 

Two fire dartfish off Puerto Galera, Philippines
 

The Nordic Man himself, Tommi Kokkola

To see more of Tommi’s work, visit his website, www.tommikokkolaphotography.com.