Guardian of the Mangroves – Overall Winner. Tanya Houppermans, Cuba. A curious American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus) swims right up to Tanya, at Gardens of the Queen (Jardines De La Reina), an archipelago off the coast of Cuba. It has been strictly protected since 1996, and is one of the most untouched marine ecosystems in the world. ‍ “The healthy population of American crocodiles is down to the pristine condition of the mangroves and I wanted to capture close ups of this gentle giant in its natural habitat. I hope this image can illustrate that protecting areas like this is so critical”. (Photo by Tanya Griffin Houppermans/Mangrove Photographer of the Year)

A diver wearing a Santa Claus costume swims with fishes in a large tank during an underwater performance for the upcoming Christmas celebration at Hakkeijima Sea Paradise in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, Japan on December 1, 2022. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

People applaud as a delivery robot departs from the Nihonbashi Post Office to deliver traditional New Year's Day cards, during a ceremony in Tokyo on January 1, 2023. (Photo by JIJI Press/AFP Photo)

Vendor Yegor Dyachkovsky, 45, poses for a picture at an open-air market on a frosty day in Yakutsk, Russia, January 15, 2023. Yakutsk, one of the Russia's north-most cities, is hit by an extreme cold snap as the air temperature on Sunday (January 15) plunged as low as minus 51 degrees Celsius (minus 59.8 degrees Fahrenheit). (Photo by Roman Kutukov/Reuters)

Irish television personality, presenter and model Maura Higgins early February 2023 looked sensational as she stripped to a black mesh bodysuit. (Photo by Iulia David)

A man stands in front of a display with an artificial coral inside the Davos Congress Center at the eve of the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Sunday, January 15, 2023. The site specific data sculpture by media artist Refik Anadol based on approximately one billion coral images processed by machine learning classification models. The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum is taking place in Davos from Jan. 16 until Jan. 20, 2023. (Photo by Markus Schreiber/AP Photo)

A French bulldog wears a costume at the annual Pet Expo 2021 in Bangkok, Thailand on November 25, 2021. (Photo by Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

Photograph of model Czech-Italian Eva Herzigova taken by Italian photographer Gian Paolo Barbieri in Rome, Italy, 1997. (Photo by Gian Paolo Barbieri/Fondazione Gian Paolo Barbieri/29 ARTS IN PROGRESS gallery/Handout via Reuters)