Biologist wins Wildlife Photographer of the Year for a second time

A “luminescent” picture of a tri-spine horseshoe crab gliding along the bottom of the sea has won Frenchman Laurent Ballesta his second Wildlife Photographer of the Year title.

Ballesta, an underwater photographer and marine biologist, captured the image in the protected waters of Pangatalan Island in the Philippines – a haven for the crabs.

In the photograph, it is accompanied by three golden trevally fish.

Horseshoe crabs have survived for more than 100 million years, but they now face habitat destruction and overfishing as they are caught for food and for their blue blood, which is used in vaccines.

Mr Ballesta is just the second person in the Natural History Museum’s 59-year-old competition to have won the prize twice.

He first picked up the accolade in 2021 for a shot of camouflage grouper fish in a swirl of eggs and sperm in Fakarava, French Polynesia.

Kath Moran, chair of the judging panel, described the winning photo as “luminescent”.

“To see a horseshoe crab so vibrantly alive in its natural habitat, in such a hauntingly beautiful way, was astonishing,” she said.

“We are looking at an ancient species, highly endangered, and also critical to human health.”

The Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year award went to 17-year-old Carmel Bechler from Israel, for snapping several barn owls in a hollowed-out concrete building by a roadside.

He used his family’s car as a hide with long exposure times to capture the light trails of passing traffic.

“I hope to share with my photography that the beauty of the natural world is all around us, even in places where we least expect it to be – we just need to open our eyes and our minds,” he said.

The winning photographs were selected from 49,957 original entries from 95 countries and were announced at an awards ceremony in South Kensington, London on Tuesday.

Among the 17 other category winners was a beached orca in the Netherlands photographed by Lennart Verheuvel which was later found to be malnourished and sick – most likely from PCB contamination.

Poisoning from this industrial chemical is common in European waters despite the chemical being banned decades ago.

Agorastos Papatsanis captured how the parasol mushroom releases its spores for them to drift on air currents in search of new places to grow in his home country of Greece, capturing the colourful refraction of light through the rain on Mount Olympus.

An illuminated forest in Tamil Nadu, India, won the Behaviour: Invertebrates award, with Sriram Murali showcasing how fireflies attract mates by combining 50 exposures of 19 seconds with 16 minutes of the beetles’ bioluminescence.

Two Nubian ibex locking horns in a cliff-side clash in Israel were captured by Amit Eshel as he crept up to the battling males, who ram their heads together during the mating season in a competition of physical prowess.

Dr Doug Gurr, director of the Natural History Museum, said: “Whilst inspiring absolute awe and wonder, this year’s winning images present compelling evidence of our impact on nature – both positive and negative.

“Global promises must shift to action to turn the tide on nature’s decline.”

View the other contenders for the prize below.