Mangroves Are Key to Coastal Ecosystems. See 20 Breathtaking Images That Reveal How the Timber Assist Wildlife and Face Threats

The Mangrove Photography Awards honor photographs that exhibit the sweetness—and the fragility—of those beneficial intertidal forests

Carlyn Kranking

| Associate Web Editor, Science

July 24, 2026 11:23 a.m.

For bushes that cowl solely about 0.1 percent of the Earth’s surface, mangroves punch above their weight. These salt-tolerant vegetation discovered on tropical shores are among the most productive ecosystems in the world. As the tides come out and in, submerging and exposing their finger-like roots, mangroves quietly shelter animals, store carbon from the environment and maintain coastal human communities.

“They play a far more important role in our lives than you may think,” filmmaker Leo Thom says in a press release. With such a restricted vary, mangroves are out of attain to many individuals. But images can convey them up shut.

In 2015, Thom based the Mangrove Photography Awards, a contest that celebrates mangrove ecosystems. The annual competitors highlights the bushes’ magnificence, their significance to each animals and folks and their vulnerability in a altering world. It’s run by the Mangrove Action Project, a nonprofit devoted to the conservation, administration and restoration of mangroves by way of partnerships with native communities.

The contest introduced the winners of its twelfth annual competitors right this moment, which rose to the highest from a pool of 5,258 entries from 87 nations.

This yr’s profitable {photograph} tells a narrative of a largely hidden however virulent risk to mangrove forests and ocean ecosystems: misplaced and deserted fishing tools, often called “ghost gear.”

Photographer Gaurav Patil of India had observed ghost nets ensnaring the roots of mangroves for a number of years. “I wanted to document it in an artistic manner to grab the attention of the viewers,” Patil says in a press release.

In the 13-second publicity, taken at Nandgaon village in Maharashtra, south of Mumbai, a fishing internet tangled round a mangrove glows purple below ultraviolet gentle.

Between 500,000 and one million tons of fishing gear are estimated to be getting into the oceans annually. These nets, traps and features can entangle animals, choke coral reefs, break down into microplastics and injury mangrove ecosystems.

“Ghost nets are a real problem,” contest decide Dhritiman Mukherjee says within the assertion. “This photographer has put life into a subject that normally looks dull but is deeply important for conservation.”

Raising consciousness about existential threats to mangroves is among the targets of the competition. Other winners and recommended pictures from this yr function destructive human impacts on mangroves, together with unlawful harvesting and plastic waste. The profitable sequence of photographs from the portfolio class, taken by Nicolò Brugnara, paperwork the toll of developing a coastal street in Mumbai. The photographs present a mangrove forest being cleared with hearth, the loss for the Indigenous Koli group and a protest towards the street’s improvement.

The winners additionally present how people dwell comfortably alongside these forests, from fishing sustainably to planting new bushes. One extremely recommended picture by photographer Mark Kevin Badayos of the Philippines captures kids climbing and leaping from mangroves, smiles on their faces.

“Photography has the ability to help us receive and feel close to … stories, no matter our language,” contest decide Morgan Heim says within the assertion. “And conservation is a story—a complicated one.”

The full record of winners could be seen on the Mangrove Action Project’s website. Here’s our collection of a few of the pictures that seize the sweetness and biodiversity of those ecosystems.