Human Connection Award: People and Planet Ocean – Winner – Steve Woods. A free diver interacts with a sperm whale among a cloud of sargassum weed, Dominica. (Photo by Steve Woods/Ocean Photographer of the Year 2022)

Michael O’Neill won a prize in animal portraits with fry of a peacock bass hovering around their mother for protection against predators in South Florida. (Photo by Michael Patrick O'Neill/2016 National Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year)

An adult specimen of Nannospalax (leucodon) montanosyrmiensis, a variant of the lesser mole-rat (Spalax leucodon) is pictured near Albertirsa, some 60 kilometers southeast of Budapest, Hungary, 12 May 2018. The critically endangered rodent lives in several isolated populations in the Carpathian Basin. (Photo by Sandor Ujvari/EPA/EFE)

Fossil records indicate that this early lizard, Megalania (Megalania prisca or Varanus priscus), was a whopping seven metres in length. They were part of a megafaunal assemblage that inhabited southern Australia during the Pleistocene. The youngest fossil remains date to around 50,000 years ago. The first aboriginal settlers of Australia might have encountered them and been a factor in their extinction. (Photo by Sky TV/The Guardian)

Hikaru Cho believes that we should challenge our imaginations to create new work using traditional tools, not fancy computers and software. (Photo by Jim Marks/PA Wire)

This picture shows a two-year old orangutan seized from a residents house at the provincial Nature Conservation and Agency (BKSDSA) office in Banda Aceh on September 16, 2014. The critically-endangered primates population are dwindling rapidly due to poaching and rapid destruction of their forest habitat that is being converted into palm oil plantations. (Photo by Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP Photo)

“This grey adult male seal enjoys a good grin while lying on the beach”. (Photo by Michael Hutch/SplashdownDirect via Rex USA)

A man makes traditional candy “Matang” in preparation for the upcoming Chinese Lunar New Year in Yuqing County, Zunyi, Guizhou Province, China, January 18, 2016. (Photo by Reuters/China Daily)