In the photo above, marine biologists Nauras Daraghmeh and Yusuf El-Khaled install an incubation chamber over a coral reef community in the depths of the Red Sea. The chambers measure the amount of oxygen consumed and produced by corals and their symbiotic algae, allowing researchers a glimpse into how this valuable but endangered ecosystem works.
But this photograph, captured by independent marine biologist Uli Kunz, is also special because it offers a rare snapshot of the people behind the essential research. In this way, the image was one of the five finalists in this year’s edition. Scientists at Work Competitionorganized by Nature.
This year, scientists from around the world submitted more than 220 entries, and a panel of Nature staff selected the winners, which can be viewed here.
algae bloom
Viewed from above, toxic algae blooms in Dog Lake, Ontario, instill a certain calm that underlies their menacing presence. Things are even worse if you’re actually on the small boat, according to Haolun “Allen” Tian, a PhD student at Queen’s University in Canada, who took this winning photo. Closer to the surface of the lake, there is a distinctive “layer of toxic, foul-smelling rot,” Tian said. Nature News.
“During the fall, they actually rot and die,” he explained. “Basically, there are very few species that can eat them, so they don’t enter the food web.”
Tian leads a project investigating how algae interact with other species in the lake. To do so, the team must collect and extract the algae of interest, even if things smell bad.
microscopic mosquito
By the way, the winning photographs of the contest share a good part of the aesthetics with art and cinema. But this finalist isn’t a scientist watching a movie: he’s an entomologist at work, studying a yellow fever mosquito to which fluorescent dye and a mosquito-killing agent have been added. The goal of the project is to study how the drug nitisinone could reduce the activity of blood-feeding insects.
“The ultraviolet lighting created striking colors from both the small mosquito and the condensation that formed beneath the cold Petri dish,” photographer Shayanta Chowdhury, a doctoral student at the University of Notre Dame, told Nature News.
whale shark
In this fascinating photograph, marine biologist Michael Doane carefully collects a sample of microorganisms living on the skin of a whale shark. Peeking around the corner is a silvertip shark, whose looming presence “made all of our hearts race, except for Mike, who was focused on the microbes,” Rob Hartcourt, who took the photo, told Nature News.
“Swimming alongside a 12-meter (39-foot) whale shark as it cruises through the blue, gulping and seemingly bewildered by our presence is both humbling and exhilarating,” recalled Harcourt, a marine ecologist at Macquarie University in Australia. The moment reminded him of how everything “was unfolding within a broader, interconnected marine community.”
migratory ibis
Finally, this photograph, which is reminiscent of an iconic scene from eastern time—was named the overall winner of this year’s competition. To be clear, it is not humans who follow northern bald ibises. The birds follow their human foster parents as they sing a “rhythmic German melody to guide them on their way to their winter settlements” for 50 days and 2,800 kilometers (1,700 miles), according to the Nature report.
This photograph was taken by student Gunnar Hartmann in Jaén, Spain. Here, members of an Austrian research and conservation group, traveling in an ultralight aircraft, fly alongside a flock of northern bald ibises, which the researchers hand-raised.
