‘Horrific and beautiful’ whale rescue image wins photography prize

Just moments after Misa Grobbelaar photographed an endangered humpback whale freed from its chain, the whale “stopped and looked at us as if to say thank you,” she said. Rescue photo taken off the coast of Ha'apai, Tonga, wins top prize Oceania 2025 Photo Contest organized by Nature Conservancy.

Grobbelaar and her rescue team responded to a distress call about an entangled humpback whale, arriving to find “a heavy, rusty chain embedded deep in its tail,” Grobbelaar said in announcing her victory. They worked “carefully and silently” to free her until the chain finally broke, she said.

Although humpback whales are no longer considered endangered as a species, and overall numbers have recovered from low levels seen in the mid-20th century due to over-harvesting, some populations are still threatened, including those found off the coast of Tonga. Their numbers still number in the several thousand, about 30 percent less than before the widespread use of whaling.

“It's terrible and beautiful, this is humanity's relationship with nature at its worst and humanity's concern for nature at its best all at the same time,” Jarrod Board, one of the competition judges, said in the announcement.

The competition, which was open to photographers from Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, also awarded prizes in other categories, such as this adorable shot (above) Pluteus with velvet ornament mushroom growing on wood, winner in the Plants and Fungi category. Photographer Nick Wooding spotted the nut-colored mushrooms shortly before they opened and returned a couple of days later to find them in “immaculate” condition.

Scott Portelli won first prize in the Earths category for his kaleidoscopic time-lapse photography of stars above a cliff (above) in Western Australia's Windjana Gorge National Park, famous for its distinctive red rock formations. It took more than 600 photographs to show the movement of stars across the night sky, from sunset to dawn.

This vibrant photo (above) shows a female peacock mantis shrimp (Odontodactylus cillarus), filmed by Peter McGee in Bali, Indonesia, received third place in the Water category. The shrimp guards its precious cargo of red eggs while scanning the water around it.