Mangrove Photo Awards Crown Winners From 5,258 Entries
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- Gaurav Patil (India) won overall Mangrove Photographer of the Year 2026 for "Tangled Glow," a 13-second UV exposure showing discarded 'ghost' fishing nets tangled in mangroves at Nandgaon village, Maharashtra, highlighting a pollution crisis receiving less attention than open-ocean ghost gear.
- The competition drew 5,258 entries from 87 countries, with Indian photographers dominating recognized categories — Patil as overall winner, Ashok Behera highly commended for mudskippers in the Sundarbans, and Nicoló Brugnara winning portfolio stories.
- Garry Lotulung (Indonesia) was highly commended for "From Encircled by the Sea," documenting Java's northern coast where land subsides up to 30cm a year and nearly 80% of Demak's original mangrove forest has vanished, profiling resident Pasijah, who has planted roughly 15,000 mangroves annually for 20 years.
- Nicoló Brugnara won portfolio stories for "Pillars in the Sea," capturing the Koli fishing community's traditional Bombay duck drying in Versova Koliwada and crowds at Charkop's Turzon Point protesting Mumbai's 26km coastal road project over unconsulted approvals.
- Ewan Tregarot (Netherlands Antilles) won the underwater category for grey snappers hunting baitfish beneath Bonaire's Lac Bay mangrove canopy, while Katanyou Wuttichaitanakorn (Thailand) took Young Photographer for documenting mosquitoes that have evolved to feed on cold-blooded mudskippers.
- Biodiversity entries also included Kerron Noel (Trinidad and Tobago), runner-up for a sleeping silky anteater on a red mangrove at the Caroni swamp, where the species still faces habitat destruction, fire, and illegal hunting despite a global 'least concern' classification.
Why it matters: The award's top image reframes 'ghost gear' pollution as a mangrove crisis rather than purely an open-ocean one — an angle the article notes has been far less documented — while the commended portfolio work centers coastal communities actively losing land and livelihoods, from Java's 30cm/year subsidence to Mumbai's contested coastal road.
