Captured on an Indonesian night dive with a Nikon D800E, this remarkable image reveals a tiny universe of undersea life

A salp floats in the dark water, containing several smaller organisms inside it, including a small, yellow, black-spotted juvenile boxfish, a glowing orange jellyfish, and several crustaceans.

In the pitch-black waters above Indonesia's Lembeh Strait, photographer Massimo Giorgetta encountered something quite incredible. A tunicate salp – a transparent, barrel-shaped marine animal barely five centimeters across – had become a floating sanctuary for an extraordinary array of marine life.

Protected Lives was captured on 14 April 2023, during what divers call a blackwater dive. Unlike traditional night dives conducted on reefs, this more challenging approach takes you miles offshore into open ocean, suspended over deep water in complete darkness.