Naples & more

 

Flamboyant in close-up, a cowry is well disguised at a distance in the fluffy arms of pink-and-white soft coral.
The mollusk's body covers its shell, polishing it to the famous cowry sheen.

 

The ruins of an abandoned restaurant offer a view of the future for the towns closest to the volcano.

 

 

Scarred by minor eruptions, Vesuvius hovers menacingly above Naples, a mere nine miles (14.5 kilometers) away.
A major explosion could shatter the crater, destroy the city, and ravage the entire region.

 

The world's most dangerous volcano looms over the lives of three million people in southern Italy.
An eruption in A.D. 79 buried the town of Pompeii (near the white spire, at center), but new research
indicates the next blast could be much bigger.

A school of golden sweepers shelters beneath a canopy of table coral on a reef off Kri Island in the Raja Ampat archipelago.

 
 

Waterton National Glacier Park

As if the lifeblood of the Earth were welling up in its stones, a Waterton creek bed
gleams crimson.
Iron-rich rocks are glazed by brushstrokes of tumbling water, some of the cleanest on the continent.