A former marine biologist's 13-second UV photo of a mangrove choked by fishing nets wins the 2026 Mangrove Photography Awards

[Annie]

Indian photographer Gaurav Patil has won the overall prize at the 2026 Mangrove Photography Awards with an image titled "Tangled glow: When life meets the ruins," a striking nighttime shot of a mangrove tree wrapped in discarded fishing nets, captured on the tide swept shore of Nandgaon village in Maharashtra, south of Mumbai. Patil, a marine biologist turned photographer, used a 13 second ultraviolet exposure to give the abandoned netting an eerie glow against the dark tree canopy.

The photograph is meant to draw attention to a specific, often overlooked environmental problem. Discarded fishing gear, sometimes called ghost nets once abandoned in the water, gets trapped in mangrove root systems and canopies, where it slowly chokes the plant, releases microplastics into the surrounding ecosystem, and can persist for decades without breaking down naturally. Patil described the sight as common but largely ignored, saying he wanted to document it in an artistic way specifically to grab viewers' attention rather than presenting it as another straightforward documentary shot.

Leo Thom, creative director and founder of the Mangrove Photography Awards, praised the image specifically for surfacing a threat that's been going largely unnoticed globally despite how widespread it actually is. Mangroves face pressure from multiple directions at once, including coastal development, pollution, and rising seas, and the awards exist specifically to bring visual attention to a habitat that plays an outsized role in coastal protection and carbon storage relative to how much public awareness it actually receives.

The Portfolio Stories category winner, Italian photographer Nicolò Brugnara, took a different approach entirely, documenting a large public protest in Mumbai where hundreds of people gathered holding signs reading "Save Mangroves, Save Mumbai" in opposition to a coastal road development project. Between Patil's quiet, artistic single image and Brugnara's documentary style crowd photography, this year's winning entries span the full range of how photographers are choosing to visualize the same underlying mangrove conservation crisis, from an intimate ecological detail to a broad social movement responding to it

Mangrove Photography Awards 2026 C2E Spcwww.cnn.com

[LivMorgan]

The contrast between the overall winner's quiet, single artistic image and the Portfolio Stories winner's documentary crowd photography is a nice reflection of how differently photographers can approach essentially the same underlying environmental crisis and still both land equally effectively with a judging panel.

One image works through mood, composition, and a slow, contemplative closer look at a small ecological detail most people would simply walk right past without noticing. The other works through sheer visible scale and collective human action, hundreds of people gathered together demanding something change. Both approaches clearly have real value depending on what specific emotional or informational response a photographer is actually trying to generate in a viewer

[Frost Jay]

A marine biologist turning photographer specifically to make an environmental issue more visually compelling is such a smart use of scientific background paired with an artistic skill. He clearly understands both what the actual problem is and how to make people who wouldn't otherwise care actually stop and look

[Debbie]

Mangroves specifically deserve way more mainstream public attention than they typically get relative to how much ecological and climate value they actually provide, storing carbon at rates that significantly outpace many other types of forest and protecting coastlines from storm surge and erosion in ways engineered infrastructure often can't match nearly as effectively or as cheaply.

Yet mangroves rarely get anywhere near the same public attention or emotional resonance that something like rainforest deforestation or coral reef bleaching typically receives in broader environmental media coverage and general public consciousness. Awards and dedicated photography competitions specifically focused on this one particular ecosystem probably do real, meaningful work closing that specific attention gap, one striking, memorable image at a time. It's a slow, incremental way to build genuine public awareness, but probably one of the more effective tools actually available given how visual and image driven environmental communication and advocacy has increasingly become in recent years. Hopefully more of these specific, striking images keep finding their way into broader mainstream media coverage rather than staying confined mostly to specialist photography circles

[Natalie_86]

Ghost nets specifically get way less mainstream media attention compared to plastic straws or bottles, despite apparently being an enormous ongoing problem for marine ecosystems generally. Glad this particular image is helping shine some real light on a genuinely underdiscussed specific issue

[BiscuitTin46]

Curious whether awards recognition like this actually translates into any meaningful real world policy change or increased conservation funding for mangrove habitats specifically, or if it mostly just circulates within photography and environmental awareness circles without much broader tangible impact. Would be great to see some kind of actual follow up tracking whether images like this genuinely move any needle on real world conservation outcomes. Award recognition alone rarely seems to be sufficient on its own without further sustained advocacy work behind it

[veritas.io]

Thirteen seconds of UV exposure at night to get that eerie glow effect is a deliberate, technical choice rather than a lucky accidental shot, and it shows in how effective the final image actually is at communicating urgency. A straightforward daytime documentary photo of the same tangled net probably wouldn't generate anywhere near the same emotional response or the same amount of attention. Sometimes making an environmental problem look genuinely unsettling and strange is exactly what's needed to cut through the general fatigue people feel toward yet another routine environmental photo. The technical choice here directly serves the actual communication goal rather than just being about visual novelty for its own sake