2025 Edition

A manatee and her calf (Trichechus) lounge on a seagrass bed that was replanted in Florida’s Crystal River as part of an ongoing restoration project in November 2021. Decades of pollution from sewage and fertilizer had fuelled explosions of algae, suffocating the seagrass that was the foundation of the Crystal River’s underwater ecosystem and the primary food source for manatees. Over the last five years, community organisations and restoration biologists have banded together to clean up the pollution and replant more than 400,000 square metres of seagrass. Manatees now use Crystal River year-round as a nursery to raise calves. In other parts of Florida, water pollution has wiped out seagrass, triggering mass die-offs of thousands of manatees. The Crystal River’s restoration provides a roadmap for fixing problems of this kind in other parts of the state and offers hope for the future.

14-30 mm f/4 Lens - 1/50 sec at f/4 ISO 1000