A Somali man carries a fish at Liido beach in Mogadishu, Somalia on December 29, 2023. (Photo by Feisal Omar/Reuters)

Palestinian children practise parkour along a beach in Gaza City at sunset on January 27, 2021. (Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP Photo)

The sunrise at Boscombe beach at Bournemouth in Dorset, southwest United Kingdom on February 23, 2021. (Photo by Steve Hogan/pictureexclusive.com)

Indian artist Sudarsan Pattnaik works on a sand sculpture depicting drowned Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi at Puri beach, some 65 kilometers away from Bhubaneswar, on September 4, 2015. Charities helping refugees saw a surge in donations on September 4 across Europe as people shocked by the heart-rending images of a drowned Syrian boy on a Turkish beach dug deep to help out. The photos of the lifeless body of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, lying on a beach in Bodrum, Turkey, have triggered a wave of emotion across the continent, despite deep divisions among European governments on how to deal with the crisis. (Photo by Asit Kumar/AFP Photo)

In this Feb. 17, 2017 photo, surfers walk to La Pampilla beach in Lima, Peru. Night surfing apparently came about in Lima because of a dispute with the capital municipality that in 2015 increased the width of a road that runs along the coast. The surfers protested the construction for months by camping on the asphalted beach area, but in the end the municipality prevailed, with support from the police. At the end of 2016, perhaps to win over the surfers, Lima's mayor set up beach lights that allows for night surfing. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

“The young adult humpback could have a plot waiting for it at a whale graveyard hidden in bushland at Garrigal Garigal National Park”. – Janet Fife-Yeomans via AdelaideNow

Photo: People gather on the beach to see the carcass of a male sub-adult humpback whale that washed up at New Port Beach overnight at Newport Beach overnight on August 1, 2012 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Brendon Thorne)

Onlookers gather around a struggling beached whale in the Yoff neighborhood of Dakar, Senegal Wednesday, May 21, 2008. Residents worked Wednesday morning to save some of the more than 80 whales that were stranded on the beach Tuesday night. This whale was successfully towed out to sea by a fishing boat, though at least 20 others lay dead on the beach by midday Wednesday. (Photo by Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo)

Now celebrating its 40th year, Nikon Small World is widely regarded as the leading forum to recognize proficiency and photographic excellence of photography taken under the microscope. To select the winners, competition judges analyzed entries from all over the world covering subjects ranging from chemical compounds to up-close-and-personal looks at biological specimens. The 2014 winners will be revealed on October 30th. In 2014, the competition received over 1,200 entries from more than 79 countries around the world. (Photo by Dr. Igor Robert Siwanowicz/Nikon Small World 2014)