Nature Photography Competition Winners Announced

The journal Nature has announced the winners of its annual Scientist at Work photography competition.

Grand Prize Winner

The overall winning image, taken by Gunnar Hartmann, shows a flock of northern bald ibises following an ultralight aircraft during a migration escort mission in Spain.

Key Details

• The northern bald ibis disappeared from Europe approximately 400 years ago due to overhunting. A population was later discovered in Syria and Morocco. Scientists brought some birds to Europe for captive rearing, where they bond with human handlers.

• In fall 2024, Hartmann joined the Waldrappteam, a conservation group, for 50 days as they guided 36 northern bald ibises from southeastern Germany to southern Spain using an ultralight aircraft.

The photograph was taken near Jaén, Andalusia, Spain, on a cool morning. The group had struggled to motivate the tired birds to follow the aircraft.

Other Winning Photographs

Allen Tian captured an overhead image of an algal bloom in Dog Lake, Ontario, Canada, showing a green, undulating pattern. His research team monitors and predicts such blooms, which cause environmental and economic harm.

Rob Harcourt photographed a marine biologist sampling microbes from a wild whale shark off western Australia.

Uli Kunz captured two scientists examining a coral specimen in an incubation chamber on the Red Sea floor off Saudi Arabia.

Lee Haines studies mosquitoes via a microscope in a photograph by Shayanta Chowdhury. The image shows a mosquito that ingested a fluorescently dyed sugar meal, used to test a potential mosquito-killing compound.