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For years, Gaurav Patil has seen deserted fishing nets snag and tangle in India’s mangroves. They’re referred to as “ghost nets” and may break down into microplastics, choke the coastal bushes and disrupt the ecosystem.
Motivated to show this “overlooked” disaster, he took his digital camera to a tide-swept shore of Nandgaon village, Maharashtra, south of Mumbai, and captured a picture of a tree at night time, utilizing a 13-second UV publicity that gave an eerie glow to the web caught in its cover. The ensuing picture is the general winner of the 2026 Mangrove Photography Awards.
“I came across this particular patch where discarded fishing nets were getting trapped,” defined the marine-biologist-turned-photographer, in his picture submission. “It 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.”
Titled “Tangled glow: When life meets the ruins,” the fascinating {photograph} places a highlight on a disaster that has been quietly unfolding for years.
India is dwelling to almost 5,000 sq. kilometers (1,931 sq. miles) of mangrove cowl unfold throughout its shoreline, together with 40% of the most important mangrove forest on the earth, The Sundarbans, with the rest in neighboring Bangladesh. The bushes are very important coastal boundaries that shelter endangered species, forestall shoreline erosion, retailer as much as four times more carbon per acre than tropical rainforests, and maintain hundreds of thousands of livelihoods via fisheries and tourism. But this treasured ecosystem is going through mounting threats.
As properly as “ghost nets,” rising sea ranges, aquaculture — resembling shrimp farms — and coastal growth are taking their toll. In December 2025, the Bombay High Court authorised a road-building undertaking that might have an effect on greater than 45,000 mangrove trees alongside Mumbai’s western coast. Yet conservation of those forests might be a part of the answer to city flooding.
“Mangroves 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,” Leo Thom, inventive director and founding father of the Mangrove Photography Awards, advised CNN. “Abandoned fishing gear is quiet and destructive, slowly choking the plant, releasing microplastics into the ecosystem, and persisting for decades.”
The drawback extends far past India’s shores. The WWF estimated that 500,000 to 1 million tons of fishing gear are deserted within the ocean yearly. An IUCN Red List of Ecosystems evaluation discovered that greater than half of worldwide mangroves are liable to collapse by 2050.
The range at stake is huge: different counseled photos within the awards present wildlife searching for refuge in mangroves internationally, from jungle cat kittens and royal Bengal tigers in India, to bottlenose dolphins within the US and Nile screens in Gambia, West Africa.
“Storytelling is such a big part of the protection of these ecosystems, and we’re also hoping that the awards will contribute to raising awareness on how to restore their habitats properly,” Thom added. “Money is just being poured on mass planting projects that aren’t successful,” he continued, including that analysis has discovered hydrology — re-establishing the pure circulate of water into degraded mangrove ecosystems — to be helpful, “as it’ll allow the mangrove to spread naturally without human intervention.”
One of the award classes is devoted to conservation and restoration. The successful picture, taken by Garry Lotulung, exhibits Pasijah, a 56-year-old resident of Bedono in Central Java, Indonesia, planting mangrove seedlings after one more flood submerged her village. In 2021, she and her son planted 15,000 seedlings in a single day; by the subsequent morning, the waves had washed all of them away.
“It’s precisely this kind of story that will help us spread awareness,” Thom stated. “When we started, we had less than 100 submissions. This year, which marks our 12th edition, we received more than 5,000 of them — and it shows that more and more people are realizing how crucial mangroves are for climate resilience and coastal protection.”