This dramatic shot of a northern gannet diving for prey bested 24,000 other images to win the overall prize in the .

The photo was taken off Shetland, UK, as the bird hunted for fish to feed its offspring. When gannets spot fish, they turn to fly into the wind, stretch out their wings as brakes, precisely adjust their position and then dive-bomb into the water with wings tucked at speeds of up to 86 kilometres per hour.

They have evolved to handle this dramatic moment, with muscles that lock their vertebrae into position, air sacs in the face and chest to protect from impact, and nostrils that prevent jets of water entering.

鈥淭he handsome northern gannets lead a dualistic existence,鈥� said Spiers in an announcement about the win. 鈥淚n the nest, their newborn is carefully nurtured, and a couple鈥檚 bond is reinforced by pointing sharp beaks to the sky as they tenderly stroke their white necks together. In flight, hunting mode takes over, and piercing yellow eyes, fringed with blue circles, scour the sea for prey.鈥�

Spiers had been diving in the chilly, 10掳C (50掳F) waters of Shetland when he realised the sun was visible from his position under the sea. 鈥淓ven in summer, sunshine is far from guaranteed in this remote British archipelago, so my creative engine started firing when the sunball was visible from underwater. I envisioned the shot of the gannet diving straight through the middle of it, and dedicated my entire dive to capturing that single frame,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he gannets were diving all around me, but I refused to be distracted and kept my camera pointed at the sun. After a long wait, a gannet finally dived through in the perfect spot and I met the bird as it careened under the sea. The moment was over in a split second.鈥�

A bronze award in the prize鈥檚 portrait category was given to David Stowe, who captured this western parotia (Parotia sefilata), below, dancing in the dark rainforest of West Papua, Indonesia, in a dazzling attempt to attract a female.

Donald Chin photographed this protective tawny frogmouth (Podargus strigoides), shown below, near Perth in Australia. As rain falls in the forest, this fledgling seems to raise a wing to cover its siblings. Chin won a gold award in the 鈥渂ird behaviour鈥� category of the prize.

The below image by Alex Pansier features hundreds, if not thousands, of guillemots (Uria aalge) in flight over Horn酶ya, Norway. The repeating shapes have an Escher-like quality. Pansier took a silver award in the 鈥渂irds in flight鈥� category of the prize.

Luca Eberle from Italy photographed the 鈥� unfortunately killed, stuffed and discarded 鈥� Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus) shown below in Malta. Authorities inspect taxidermy samples to catch illegal hunting of protected species like this one, causing some collectors to dispose of older specimens. Here, a BirdLife Malta officer is shown finding the stuffed vulture, which had been left by the roadside. Eberle won a bronze award in the 鈥渃onservation, single image鈥� category for this shot.

Another underwater shot, from Romain Barats, features gentoo penguins (Pygoscelis papua) feeding in Charcot Bay, Antarctica, below. Barats was snorkelling when a raft of gentoo penguins appeared to fish and feed on krill. 鈥淭hese iconic birds are incredibly curious so they went straight to me to evaluate if I could be a threat or not. They spent a while swimming so fast around me,鈥� he said in an announcement about the competition, in which he won a bronze award in the 鈥渂irds in the environment鈥� category.

We cannot live without soil. It provides us with building materials, most of our antibiotics and 95 per cent of our food.

In, photographer and soil ecologist Frank Ashwood urges us to better appreciate and protect the soil we rely on. He does so with stunning images of the creatures that call soil home.

The adorable velvet worm in the main image was found under a log in a misty beech forest on the South Island of New Zealand. 鈥淭hey look like little worms rolled in sequins,鈥� says Ashwood. But looks can be deceiving: 鈥淭hey crawl around and shoot glue out of special organs on their heads to immobilise their pray, which they鈥檒l then go and eat while alive.鈥�

A droplet of sperm deposited by a male springtail, a tiny insect-like creature, sits atop a delicate stem made of protein-rich secretions in the image below. 鈥淚t鈥檚 like a lollipop, basically, with a bit of sperm-rich fluid on the top, which the males leave for the females to come and find,鈥� says Ashwood.

But beware any marauding rivals. 鈥淚f a male finds another springtail鈥檚 spermatophore, they will actually eat it to destroy it,鈥� he says.

Below, a beautiful woodlouse spider stares straight down the lens of Ashwood鈥檚 camera. Its large fangs have evolved to better hunt woodlice. 鈥淭hey鈥檒l come at a woodlouse from the top or the side, grasp it, then reach underneath with those sharp bits of the fangs and pierce into the soft underbelly,鈥� he says.

A bright yellow slime mould stretches across a decaying log in the shot below. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a big, sprawling mass of a single cell, essentially; they branch out looking for food,鈥� says Ashwood. The mould鈥檚 efficient networks have been used to map road networks, the fastest way out of an IKEA showroom and dark matter throughout the universe, he says.

This gorgeous giant springtail, below, was found in a forest in New Zealand. Its orange spines help it camouflage against logs. 鈥淏ecause they鈥檙e rare, when you do see one, it鈥檚 a moment of pure exhilaration,鈥� says Ashwood. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e an indicator of the forest being in really good condition.鈥�

Ashwood, who is based at Lincoln University in New Zealand, snapped the silvery springtail below while in the UK. During the Victorian period in the 1800s, their iridescent scales were used to test microscopes. 鈥淭hey鈥檝e got really ornate, tiny sculpturing on them, so the better detail you could see, the better your microscope,鈥� he says.

Ashwood hopes his book will encourage people to protect soil, for instance by reducing deforestation and farming more sustainably. 鈥淥ver half of the world鈥檚 biodiversity is in soil, and we鈥檙e losing it at a rate that is not sustainable,鈥� he says.

When you make a purchase via聽the links聽on this page, we receive a commission.

From a viper with a bloodthirsty hitchhiker to a bullfrog narrowly missing its lunch, these photographs, all of which are in the running for this year鈥檚 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, offer a glimpse into the drama unfolding across the animal kingdom.

Biting Back,听an intimidating shot captured by Andrea and Maceo Grammatico,听was highly commended in the contest鈥檚 Animal聽Portraits category.聽The twins say it聽wasn鈥檛聽until聽reviewing their聽photographs聽that they聽spotted聽a mosquito聽drinking from the head of the聽fer-de-lance聽鈥撀爐he most dangerous snake in Central America.

There was a聽near miss in聽Jens Cullmann鈥檚聽Split-Second Escape,聽highly commended in the聽Behaviour:聽Amphibians and聽Reptiles聽category and shown in the main image.聽The moment was聽almost as聽fleeting as the frog鈥檚 prey 鈥� an African babul blue butterfly 鈥� and all the more remarkable given that Cullmann had聽spotted聽tadpoles a month earlier, returning to find them transformed into聽young bullfrogs. African bullfrogs spend much of the year聽underground聽in an聽inactive state聽known as聽aestivation,听emerging聽only for a short period after the rainy season to breed,听hunt and gorge.聽

Hiding not hunting is the speciality of the lichen dragon katydid captured by聽Gil Wizen,听below. Named Hidden Dragon, Wizen鈥檚 shot, highly commended in the Behaviour: Invertebrates category, captures the almost perfectly camouflaged, 15-millimetre-long, spiky insect 鈥� a rare species found only in the Ecuadorian Andes mountains.

Moving away from rural聽environments,听笔辞辞濒迟颈尘别听笔补蝉迟颈尘别听by Loren Elliott,听below, was聽highly commended in the Urban Wildlife category. Elliott captures聽the聽unusual聽sight聽of a聽black bear聽taking time to chill in a swimming pool in southern California. While the bear聽may look聽somewhat聽out聽of place,听these run-ins are becoming聽surprisingly common as聽housing developments continue聽to聽encroach聽on bear territory.聽聽

Finally,听a black vulture grasps the carcass of a yacare caiman in Andrew Parkinson鈥檚聽Wings of Darkness,听below, captured in Brazil鈥檚 Pantanal wetlands聽and聽also聽highly commended in the Animal Portraits category.聽Despite a seemingly firm grip, the scavenger鈥檚 meal聽wasn鈥檛聽to be,听with a jaguar waiting just out of shot for the perfect opportunity to claim the聽caiman.

The competition鈥檚 overall winner will be announced on 13 October. The Wildlife Photographer of the Year聽contest is organised by London鈥檚 Natural History聽Museum,听which will run an of the images from 16 October to 11 July 2027.

At a gathering of the University of Bristol Spelaeological Society in a pub in 2008, caver Charlie Self PhD student Gina Moseley a photograph of a cave in a limestone cliff just beyond the north-western edge of the Greenland ice sheet. Thought to be the northernmost cave in the world, it had been photographed from a US military aircraft in 1958, but never explored.

But Self also gave Moseley a report about calcite flowstone, formed by trickling water, that was found in a cave in north-eastern Greenland. Today, groundwater there is frozen in permafrost, so this flowstone must have come from a warmer, wetter time. A sample could provide a climate record exceeding the 130,000 years in Greenland ice cores, Moseley thought.

Starting in 2015, Moseley and her partner, photographer Robbie Shone, mounted four expeditions to Greenland, finally reaching that northernmost known cave, pictured above. While they didn鈥檛 find any flowstone there, they did obtain some from caves in north-eastern Greenland that showed the ground there hadn鈥檛 frozen 鈥� and vegetation had even grown 鈥� during three periods between 5 million and 10 million years ago.

It was a snapshot of a past world, but also a warning about how drastically global warming could alter Greenland in the future.

鈥淭his occurred in a world with CO2 levels that we already surpassed several decades ago,鈥� says Moseley.

In the top image, expedition member Chris Blakeley stands in the entrance of the northernmost known cave, found on the Wulff Land peninsula, after rappelling down. Below, Blakeley explores a cave in north-eastern Greenland named Crystal Palace for the hoarfrost on its ceiling.

Below, Blakeley sits in Keyhole cave, named for the shape of its entrance, where the team collected two flowstone samples.

Shone calls the caves 鈥渢ime machines鈥� that may be some of the last unexplored places on Earth, as there are no current Inuit settlements in north-eastern Greenland. But the team nonetheless witnessed the effects of human-made climate change there, including summer temperatures of 16掳C.

鈥淏y early evening, after a full day of sunshine on the ice cap, the rivers were huge, they were bursting and they were brown,鈥� says Shone. 鈥淵ou could physically see how much water had melted on the ice cap.鈥�

Below, the team explores another cave in the area, after a 6-metre vertical climb to get into it. A huge coating of blue ice was found on the cave鈥檚 back wall.

In the final image, below, Blakeley and researcher Gabriella Koltai scramble to board a helicopter hovering near a cave in the Wulff Land peninsula before a storm arrives. The team named the cave R66 after the model of helicopter that rushed them out of there.

This unusual photograph, shot under ultraviolet light with a 13-second exposure, shows some of the damage caused on land by fishing out at sea.

Gaurav Patil鈥檚 image of a fishing net that has been carried by ocean currents and become tangled in a mangrove tree on the shore of Nandgaon village, south of Mumbai, India, has won the overall prize in the 2026 . The competition is organised by US non-profit organisation Mangrove Action Project to raise awareness of the precarious position of the world鈥檚 mangrove forests.

Mangroves less than 1 per cent of all tropical forests, but provide crucial habitat for wildlife and store up to 10 times more carbon than the same area of inland forest. Despite better recent news after decades of decline, more than half of mangrove ecosystems are to be at .

Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of lost, abandoned and discarded fishing gear litter the oceans, carried around the globe by currents and eventually getting caught up or breaking down into microplastics. This gear can severely damage mangrove ecosystems, entangling marine life and choking mangrove trees.

鈥淭his photographer has put life into a subject that normally looks dull but is deeply important for conservation. Ghost nets are a real problem,鈥� said judge Dhritiman Mukherjee in an announcement about the prize.

鈥淢ost people are completely unaware of what is in the water,鈥� says Julian Cremona, a naturalist and photographer who is out to change that with his new book.

Plankton is an umbrella term for all kinds of different organisms floating in our waters, from plants, known as phytoplankton, to animals, known as zooplankton. They can be as little as 0.02 micrometres, the size of some viruses, or as big as 2 metres, the size of a large jellyfish. What they have in common is that they aren鈥檛 powerful enough to overcome the movement of water, unlike organisms that can resist the current. As Cremona writes, plankton are 鈥渄rifting organisms that are unable to determine their long-term direction and are at the whims of the current鈥�.

Cremona鈥檚 book is a guide to the different types of plankton found along the British coast, such as the larva of a Magelona worm, just 2 millimetres in size, in the main image. To take this photograph, Cremona fitted objective lenses from an old microscope to his camera.

Below is a shot of a tiny zooplankter, Oikopleura. Its body is made up of a trunk on top of a long tail, ranging from a few millimetres to a centimetre long. It has a lifespan of five to six days, over which it grows, reproduces and finally dies.

Some larger plankton are shown below, including a handful of compass jellyfish (Chrysaora hysoscella), which are mostly found in northern Europe. The umbrella of this jellyfish can stretch to 30 centimetres in diameter, and it uses its 24 tentacles to catch its food: small fish, crabs and other jellyfish.

Pictured below is a swarm of moon jellyfish (Aurelia aurita), the most common jellyfish to be found in the UK鈥檚 waters.

Some phytoplankton exhibit symbiosis with jellyfish and sea anemones, such as the aptly named snakelocks anemone (Anemonia viridis), pictured below. Single-celled Symbiodinium plankton live within the tissue of its green tentacles, where they perform photosynthesis and provide their host with carbohydrates. In return, the plankton receive inorganic carbon, nitrogen, phosphate 鈥� and a protected refuge in which to live.

Climate and health activist has been immortalised in a sculpture, The Solomon Siren 鈥� recently installed on her now-flooded former home: Kale Island in the Solomon Islands.

Rising tides completely flooded the 50,000-square-metre Pacific island in 2016. The sculpture sits in the intertidal zone, where patches of rubble and sand rise above the ocean surface from time to time.

Sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor made the sculpture as part of his Sirens series of installations around the world highlighting warming seas, sewage pollution and the presence of microplastics.

When flooding made life untenable, Bartlett and her family had to evacuate to one of the main islands. 鈥淏ack then, [the island] was land 鈥� green, vibrant, full of life,鈥� says Bartlett in a film accompanying the sculpture鈥檚 installation. 鈥淜ale became one of the first documented islands in the Solomons lost to sea level rise.鈥�

The sculpture consists of a marine-grade stainless steel tree on which a life-sized figure of Bartlett leans. The artwork also uses biochar and pH-neutral cement. Hauntingly, as the tide rises and falls, it is intermittently hidden as waves roll over.

Incorporated into the sculpture are inscriptions recording past milestones of Kale鈥檚 submergence along with predictions for a sea level rise of up to 20 centimetres by 2046. But as Taylor says, the sculpture isn鈥檛 intended to work as a scientific measuring instrument, but as a 鈥渟ymbolic representation鈥� of a changing relationship between land and sea.

鈥淲hat happened is a warning not only for us, but for the world,鈥� says Bartlett.

After the British ship Endurance (pictured above) became stuck in an ice sheet in the Weddell Sea off Antarctica in January 1915, the expedition鈥檚 official photographer, Frank Hurley, made a brave decision. He waded into the icy water filling the lower deck to rescue hundreds of his precious glass-plate photo negatives.

To Hurley鈥檚 dismay, Ernest Shackleton, the expedition leader, informed him he would have to abandon most of the negatives because they would weigh down their escape lifeboats. Hurley went through the plates one by one and smashed 400 of them on the ice before he could change his mind and risk his life to return for them, salvaging 120.

Hurley also had to relinquish most of his photography equipment and rely on a pocket camera and a few rolls of film to capture the crew鈥檚 fight for survival as they camped on the ice near their trapped ship for months. 鈥淚t is beyond conception, even to us, that we are dwelling on a colossal ice raft, with but five feet of ice separating us from 2,000 fathoms of ocean, and drifting along under the caprices of wind and tides, to heaven knows where,鈥� wrote Hurley in his diary.

The Endurance sank for good in November 1915. After months camped on the ice, in April 1916, Hurley and the rest of the crew took his fragile photo negatives and remaining supplies on lifeboats to the uninhabited Elephant Island. From there, realising there was little chance of rescue, Shackleton and five men took the James Caird lifeboat (pictured below) on a perilous journey of 1200 kilometres across the Southern Ocean to seek rescue in South Georgia, eventually rescuing the men (including Hurley) who had remained on Elephant Island in August 1916.

While stranded on the ice sheet in the Weddell Sea, Hurley proved to be a hardy survivor, fashioning a blubber stove from an old drum and eating the expedition鈥檚 sledge dogs when food supplies ran short. Pictured below is Leonard Hussey lifting the largest sledge dog, Samson.

Hurley, an Australian photographer, was recruited for the expedition to Antarctica after Shackleton saw a film he had made of Douglas Mawson鈥檚 earlier Australasian Antarctic Expedition, for which he was also the official photographer. Unfortunately, the Shackleton expedition never succeeded in crossing the Antarctic continent.

Now, the UK鈥檚 Royal Geographical Society, in collaboration with Shackleton鈥檚 granddaughter and others, has published (Riverside Press), a compilation of Hurley鈥檚 images that survived. It features the original glass-plate negatives alongside new, high-definition scans that uncover previously hidden faces and details, such as in the image below. Digitisation of the negative revealed a sixth crew member, hidden behind the smoke from the stove.

鈥淭he survival of these negatives through such a journey in such conditions to reach the safety of the Royal Geographical Society鈥檚 collections is extraordinary,鈥� says the society鈥檚 president, Jane Francis, in the book. 鈥淸Hurley鈥檚] images are an example of documentary photography at its finest. He was committed to his craft and would often put himself in danger to create the perfect image. Each of his negatives is not just a visual record of a particular moment, but a beautifully composed, carefully considered piece of art.鈥�