Marine Conservation Photographer of the Year 2023

Put a million Dollar price tag on a species and you almost certainly guarantee its decline. The base picture of this double exposure was taken before sunrise in Tokyo’s fish market. Pictured, is one of the morning’s prize fish going from auction to be sliced up and fed into Japan’s insatiable sashimi markets. Single bluefin tuna have sold there for as much as US$3m. Unsurprisingly the species is heavily overfished. This impressive apex predator, that can live for 40 years and weigh 700 kg’s, has been so commoditised that Mitsubishi began buying up stocks for cold storage – betting on price rises as numbers inevitably fall. The overlay picture shows young wild fish in Mediterranean fattening pens. Capturing juvenile tuna before they have the chance to breed is potentially devastating. Profit overcoming common sense, consumer indifference, ineffective legislation enforcement and black-market racketeering - a heady mix, potentially disastrous for Bluefin tuna. Photo © David Alpert

I saw this beautiful California sea lion one morning in La Jolla. Sadly, she had a lure hooked in her mouth. California sea lions travel long distances to hunt for food and may come in contact with fishing boats while offshore. However, I have also seen people fish by the sea lion colony so it is possible she became hooked in her own home. I will never forget the terror I have seen in the eyes of sea lions that have just had a hook get embedded on a flipper or other part of their body. Unfortunately, this sea lion went into the water before the rescue team was able to help her. Photo © Celia Kujala

I took this image while on a surftrip on the east coast of Sri Lanka. A series of sharks were laying dead on the ground with marks on their mouths from hooks, most likely from longlines set miles away offshore. Looking at the fisherman standing behind his most recent catch I thought about how little money he was just going to get from that day, comparing it to how much Asian markets would get when reselling the future dried fins from these sharks. I cannot blame the fisherman, this is the only thing they have been doing for their entire life with the only goal of bringing food to the family table. It is easy to blame, difficult to listen to the whole story. Supremacy shows the power of humans to, in approx 50 years, bring sharks to the brink of extinction, a group that has survived 5 mass extinctions. Photo © David Serradell

Polar bears and man exist in two different worlds. Human progress is relentless, but in the process we are melting ice and devastating the oceans. The two worlds - man and nature - continue to drift apart. And the crown of this incompatibility - we board this huge iron vessel with a capacity of 75k horsepower, with a luxury bar and pool to explore “the animal world” - a place moving further and further away from us. The world as we know it is very fragile, and the current state of affairs - from political conflicts to the climate crisis - means that the end could very well be nigh. These things are real, and if they continue as they are, the outcome will be catastrophic. I’m curious - what will it take to steer this ship around? So - a home divided. Or maybe the world is divided? Photo © Dmitry Kokh

While we were cleaning one of the beaches on the island, my friend called "There's a turtle trapped, I think it's dead." Rushing over we cold see the turtle trapped in fishing nets unable to breathe. In the midst of so much pain, anger and frustration, we realised that the turtle was still breathing. We got scissors and began to cut her free. We talked to her and encouraged her not to give up and gently and lovingly cut each piece of fishing net entangled in her body. I managed to portray the moment of greatest tension and care, in the release of the turtle so that it has a second chance to live and return to its home. Although I can't help wondering if she will remain free or if other fishing nets are waiting to catch her again. Photo © Damian Almua

Caribbean Nicaragua supports the largest green turtle fishery in the Western hemisphere. Although indigenous Miskitu and ethnic communities have fished green turtles for centuries, research conducted by biologists Dr Cynthia Lagueux and Dr Cathi Campbell indicates that growing pressure on this iconic species is unsustainable. This prompted authorities to enact a series of regulations to improve the management of the Nicaraguan green turtle fishery. These turtles had been confiscated by the Nicaraguan National Police because they were being illegally transported to Bluefields, the region’s capital, where turtle consumption was no longer allowed. The turtles were later released back into the ocean near the Pearl Cays. Photo © Victor Huertas

A marine biologist helps this hammerhead shark pup to breathe before releasing it. Thanks to this NGO's studies, Costa Rica created the first marine sanctuary for sharks (hammerhead sharks) in Golfito - Costa Rica. Golfito is one of the most important shark nurseries known in this country but it is unfortunately located in a fishing area. Shark populations have decreased in the past years due overfishing and some species, like hammerheads, are now facing extinction. Golfito is a small fisher town where fishing is no longer a profit business and people have to find other jobs. Thanks to the biologists' studies and the data collected during the past decade, the Costa Rican government has expanded and created a new MPA (Marine Protected Areas) and even created transnational marine protected corridors in collaboration with other counties in this area; most recently, the migratory way between Cocos Island in Costa Rica and Galapagos in Ecuador. Photo © Edward Herreno

Turtles in our oceans are under threat from marine pollution. They consume floating plastic and get entangled in fishing nets. Ghost nets are discarded or lost nets that entangle floatsam and rubbish into floating death traps. The problem in Sri Lanka is that fishermen leave the nets afloat as they are fish aggregation devices. They will rescue turtles if they come across it but since these floats can me many miles from shore, the rescue often comes too late. We were looking for whales 35 miles offshore when we came across this badly entangled Olive Ridley sea turtle. She was very calm while our guide and my guests freed the turtle from the net. Photo © Simon Lorenz

Paradorn, an orphaned Irrawaddy dolphin calf nibbles on a baby bottle, while resting in the arms of its caretaker at the rehabilitation facility of Marine Endangered Species Veterinary Hospital, Rayong, Thailand. The 6-month-old dolphin was rescued from stranding in the eastern Gulf of Thailand on July 22, 2022, and then taken into care by the veterinarians of the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources, since the chance for an unweaned calf to survive in the wild without its mother is slim. However, Paradorn died a month later despite the efforts keep it alive. As the Irrawaddy dolphin is threatened throughout its distribution range in coastal, estuarine, and riverine habitats of Southeast Asia and is also listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List, where the species just gone extinct in Laos earlier in April 2022, while the Cambodian population is less than a hundred. Photo © Sirachai Arunrugstichai