Mangrove Forests Photos

Soham Bhattacharyya has been named overall winner of this year's Mangrove Photography Awards, for his image of an endangered tiger in the Sundarbans Biosphere Reserve, India.

 

Run by the Mangrove Action Project, the competition – now in its ninth year – aims to show the relationships between wildlife, coastal communities and mangrove forests, as well as the fragility of these unique ecosystems, both above and below the waterline. [Note: Mangroves are an important protection against climate change, with one acre (4,000sq m) of mangrove forest absorbing nearly the same amount of carbon dioxide as an acre of Amazon rainforest]. 

 

Bhattacharyya's winning image, called The Finest Flower of the Mangroves, shows a young Royal Bengal tigress (Scientific name: Panthera tigris tigris) in its natural mangrove habitat, peering at the photographer. 

 

"The solitary figure of the tiger, standing amidst the lush green mangrove forest vegetation, poignantly underscores the isolation it must endure in an ever-shrinking habitat", said competition judge Daisy Gilardini. 

 

In 2021, India's West Bengal Forest Department estimated there were only 96 Royal Bengal tigers in the region.

 

My favorite selection of another four winning images from three competition categories, with descriptions by the photographers:

 

Mangroves & Underwater runner-up: Forest Meets Reef, by Brooke Pyke, Indonesia

 

A lush and thriving mangrove forest grows atop a vibrant coral reef on Raja Ampat's Gam island, Indonesia. 

 

Mangroves provide many benefits to coral reefs, including protection from sedimentation, filtering nutrients from land and rivers, and a nursery habitat for many species of juvenile fish.

 

Mangroves & People runner-up: In the Forest, by Phan Thi Khanh, Vietnam

 

A fisherman navigates the waters in the Ru Cha mangrove forest near Hue, Vietnam. In winter, the mangroves shed all their leaves, leaving thin white trunks, like a giant spider web.

 

Mangroves & Underwater winner: A Lemon's Life, by Anita Kainrath, Bahamas

 

A juvenile lemon shark (Scientific name: Negaprion brevirostris) swims in shallow mangrove forests in the Bahamas. 

 

Lemon sharks spend their first four to six years in shallow waters, where mangrove forests protect them from bigger predators.

 

Young Mangrove Photographer of the Year (under the age of 24) winner: Eye Contact, by Katanyou Wuttichaitanakorn, Thailand

 

A baby gold-spotted mudskipper (Scientific name: Periophthalmus chrysospilos) snapped on the edge of a mangrove in Samut Sakhon province, Thailand.

British Airways Flight Serves KFC

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s rare for travelers to hanker for airline food – until it’s in short supply on a 12-hour journey. 

 

A British Airways flight BA252 to London, UK which took off on July 23 from Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos couldn’t offer meals due to a catering issue. 

 

The plane made a scheduled stopover in Nassau in the Bahamas and attendants dashed out to get what they could from the terminal. While the airline didn’t elaborate on what they provided to passengers, posts on social media indicate that airline employees made a KFC run. 

 

However, the airline did make reference to their unconventional in-flight menu in their pun-ladened statement: “We apologise to customers that their full meal service was not available and we had to wing it on this occasion. We’re sorry if we ruffled any feathers”.

 

And British Airways issued passengers refreshment vouchers when they arrived at Heathrow.

Travel Advisory for the US of A

I didn’t know but countries such as New Zealand, The Bahamas, Germany, China and Japan have actually issued travel advisories to their citizens, warning them that traveling to the USA could result in very bad things happening to them. 

You would have read about children being taken from their parents and held in deplorable conditions. Folks are murdered because of the color of their skin. And rampant gun violence plaguing the country with steady frequency. 

As if you didn’t know that there had been three deadly mass shootings over 8 days in July-August alone. Four died and 13 injured in Gilroy, California on July 28. Twenty-two people killed and 24 wounded in El Paso, Texas, on August 03. And ten people killed and 27 wounded in Dayton, Ohio, on August 04. 

Now, Amnesty International, a non-governmental organization focusing on human rights – had announced on Thursday that maybe visiting the US ain't that great an idea: 

And if we are really honest about it, there's not a damn thing in the above that isn't true! 

Yesterday, in the qualifying third round, second leg – Celtic gave me a gut-wrenching shock when they crashed out of the Champions League after conceding four effing times to CFR Cluj in a frantic game on their home ground in Glasgow. 

Neil Lennon's side were already 2-1 behind on aggregate at half-time thanks to Cirpian Deac's header in the twenty-seventh minute – but seemed to have turned the tie around with goals from James Forrest (51) and Odsonne Edouard (61). 

And then Billel Omrani's penalty in the seventy-fourth minute gave the Romanian side the lead on away goals with 16 minutes left. 

Ryan Christie forced the hosts in front in the seventy-sixth minute to give us hope. 

But that hope was killed when Omrani (80) and George Tucudean (90+7) struck to seal Celtic's fate. 

It means the Scottish champions now drop into the Europa League play-off round.

Bahamas Issues Travel Advisory

The Bahamas has issued a rare travel advisory for its citizens visiting US cities because of the recent police shootings of blacks.

 

The strongly worded caution was issued Friday also warns citizens to not get involved in protests and avoid crowds.

 

It comes after two African-American men, reportedly armed, were shot dead by police in Minnesota and Louisiana, and five police officers died in a sniper attack in Texas.

 

[A Louisiana police officer shot and killed 37-year-old Alton Sterling during a confrontation outside a Baton Rouge convenience store early Tuesday morning. A thousand miles north, 32-year-old Philando Castile was shot and killed by a police officer during a traffic stop on Wednesday in Falcon Heights, a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota. His girlfriend documented the bloody aftermath in a live video stream. And on Thursday, five police officers were killed and seven others wounded in a sniper ambush in Dallas – by a gunman who authorities say was targeting white officers. It was the deadliest single incident for US law enforcement since September 11, 2001].

Young black men were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by the police in 2015, according to the findings of a Guardian study that recorded a final tally of 1,134 deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers in 2015.

Despite making up only 2 percent of the total US population, African American males between the ages of 15 and 34 comprised more than 15 percent of all deaths logged last year by an ongoing investigation into the use of deadly force by police. Their rate of police-involved deaths was 5 times higher than for white men of the same age.

"In particular young males are asked to exercise extreme caution in affected cities in their interactions with the police," advised the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Immigration. "Do not be confrontational and cooperate".

The Caribbean nation wants residents, nearly 91% of whom are black, to be aware of potentially volatile situations if they make a sojourn to the US during the former British colony's three-day holiday weekend. The Bahamas are celebrating their Independence Day today – a time when many locals travel abroad, including to the US.

 

Violence is all around, near and far!

 

Good reminders: