This year, Soham Bhattacharyya was named mangrove photographer of the year for an image capturing the curious gaze of an endangered tigress in the Sundarbans
The Finest Flower of the Mangroves – the mangrove photographer of the year overall winner. Photograph: Soham Bhattacharyya/Mangrove Photography AwardsUnique conditions in temperature, minerals and algae turn this lagoon in Colombia pink. The salinity of the seawater combined with rising temperatures makes for an ideal situation for microscopic pink algae to thrive. This is likely to become more common with rising temperatures due to climate change.
‘As I didn’t want to risk disturbing the potoo into flight, I photographed it with a long lens and partially obscured by the branches of intervening mangrove trees. It was only after looking through the lens that I realised there was actually a single egg.’ ‘I wanted to show the mess plastic is doing to this amazing place. When I found this poor hermit crab using a deodorant plastic plug instead of an empty shell, I knew I found my sad ambassador for this terrible human problem.’
Between river, sea and land, the Mangrove Marine Park, a fragile nature reserve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a home to turtles, manatees, and women who harvest clams. Members of the TRY Oyster Ladies Association from the Gambian village of Lamin head out on Lamin Bolong, a tributary of the Gambia River, to harvest oysters from the mangroves. The river’s mangroves are crucial to its ecosystem, and benefit the local women who collect oysters. The wetlands are an important carbon sink, storing up to 10 times more carbon than forests.