{"id":827117,"date":"2026-07-26T12:10:37","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T12:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/827117\/"},"modified":"2026-07-26T12:10:37","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T12:10:37","slug":"mangrove-photography-awards-2026-winning-images","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/827117\/","title":{"rendered":"Mangrove Photography Awards 2026: Winning images"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n EDITOR\u2019S NOTE:\u00a0 Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex\u2019s Perpetual Planet Initiative<\/a> has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.\n<\/p>\n

\n For years, Gaurav Patil has seen abandoned fishing nets snag and tangle in India\u2019s mangroves. They\u2019re known as \u201cghost nets\u201d and can break down into microplastics, choke the coastal trees and disrupt the ecosystem.\n <\/p>\n

\n Motivated to expose this \u201coverlooked\u201d crisis, he took his camera to a tide-swept shore of Nandgaon village, Maharashtra, south of Mumbai, and captured an image of a tree at night, using a 13-second UV exposure that gave an eerie glow to the net caught in its canopy. The resulting image is the overall winner of the 2026 Mangrove Photography Awards.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI came across this particular patch where discarded fishing nets were getting trapped,\u201d explained the marine-biologist-turned-photographer, in his photo submission. \u201cIt is not an uncommon sight, but it has been overlooked by most of us and the issue remains unresolved. (So) I wanted to document it in an artistic manner to grab the attention of the viewers.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Titled \u201cTangled glow: When life meets the ruins,\u201d the captivating photograph puts a spotlight on a crisis that has been quietly unfolding for years.\n <\/p>\n

\n India is home to nearly 5,000 square kilometers (1,931 square miles) of mangrove cover spread across its coastline, including 40% of the largest mangrove forest in the world, The Sundarbans, with the remainder in neighboring Bangladesh. The trees are vital coastal barriers that shelter endangered species, prevent shoreline erosion, store up to four times more carbon per acre<\/a> than tropical rainforests, and sustain millions of livelihoods through fisheries and tourism. But this precious ecosystem is facing mounting threats.\n <\/p>\n

\n As well as \u201cghost nets,\u201d rising sea levels, aquaculture \u2014 such as shrimp farms \u2014 and coastal development are taking their toll. In December 2025, the Bombay High Court approved a road-building project that could affect more than 45,000 mangrove trees<\/a> along Mumbai\u2019s western coast. Yet conservation of these forests could be part of the solution to urban flooding.\n <\/p>\n

\"Nicol\u00f2<\/p>\n

\n \u201cMangroves are increasingly at risk worldwide, but Gaurav Patil managed to capture an urgent threat that echoed all around the world, and has been going under the radar,\u201d Leo Thom, creative director and founder of the Mangrove Photography Awards, told CNN. \u201cAbandoned fishing gear is quiet and destructive, slowly choking the plant, releasing microplastics into the ecosystem, and persisting for decades.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The problem extends far beyond India\u2019s shores. The WWF<\/a> estimated that 500,000 to 1 million tons of fishing equipment are abandoned in the ocean every year. An IUCN Red List of Ecosystems<\/a> assessment found that more than half of global mangroves are at risk of collapse by 2050.\n <\/p>\n

\"This<\/p>\n

\n The diversity at stake is vast: other commended images in the awards show wildlife seeking refuge in mangroves across the world, from jungle cat kittens and royal Bengal tigers in India, to bottlenose dolphins in the US and Nile monitors in Gambia, West Africa.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cStorytelling is such a big part of the protection of these ecosystems, and we\u2019re also hoping that the awards will contribute to raising awareness on how to restore their habitats properly,\u201d Thom added. \u201cMoney is just being poured on mass planting projects that aren\u2019t successful,\u201d he continued, adding that research has found hydrology \u2014 re-establishing the natural flow of water into degraded mangrove ecosystems \u2014 to be beneficial, \u201cas it\u2019ll allow the mangrove to spread naturally without human intervention.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n One of the award categories is dedicated to conservation and restoration. The winning image, taken by Garry Lotulung, shows Pasijah, a 56-year-old resident of Bedono in Central Java, Indonesia, planting mangrove seedlings after yet another flood submerged her village. In 2021, she and her son planted 15,000 seedlings in a single day; by the next morning, the waves had washed them all away.\n <\/p>\n

\"Garry<\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt\u2019s precisely this kind of story that will help us spread awareness,\u201d Thom said. \u201cWhen we started, we had less than 100 submissions. This year, which marks our 12th edition, we received more than 5,000 of them \u2014 and it shows that more and more people are realizing how crucial mangroves are for climate resilience and coastal protection.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDITOR\u2019S NOTE:\u00a0 Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":827118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":["post-827117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/827118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}