A photo of a swarm of western toad tadpoles swimming in the waters of Vancouver Island has netted a Canadian photographer a prestigious international award.
Shane Gross’s The Swarm of Life has been named the Adult Grand Title Winner in the annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards by the U.K.’s Natural History Museum.
It was an “absolute shock,” he told CBC News in a call from London, where he attended the awards ceremony Tuesday night, adding that those sitting around him said the look on his face was priceless. Gross was born and raised in Regina and now lives in Nanaimo, B.C.
His photo also won the “Wetlands” category.
Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, 17, won the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year award with Life Under Dead Wood, a portrait of a tiny springtail insect and the equally tiny fruiting body of a slime mould. While he’s listed in the competition as being from Germany, he’s also a Canadian citizen. Tinker-Tsavalas told CBC News while his family lives in Berlin now, his parents were born in Toronto and Montreal, and has family in Nova Scotia and the Ottawa area.
A third Canadian, John E. Marriott of Canmore, Alta., won the Animal Portraits category with a photo of a family of lynx in the Yukon.
Six other Canadians, including a young photographer, had photos in the competition that were “highly commended” and will also be part of the museum’s exhibition of top photos. One of them, Patricia Homonylo, recently won the Bird Photographer of the Year competition with the same photo.
The photos were selected out of 59,228 entries from 117 countries and territories, the museum said in a statement.
In Canada, the full Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition will be on display at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto from Dec. 21, 2024 to May 4, 2025, and at the Royal B.C. Museum in Victoria from Feb. 14 to April 27, 2025.
Gross describes himself as a marine conservation photojournalist who is most comfortable in the water. His winning photograph was captured while snorkelling through carpets of floating aquatic plants in Cedar Lake on Vancouver Island, during a picnic outing with his fiancée, Kayla.
The photo shows dozens of western toad tadpoles, a species that has been threatened by development and disease, swimming together toward the light. Gross said it’s part of a daily afternoon migration from the safer, silty depths two or three metres below to the areas with more algae to eat. By late afternoon, he said, “they’re in there by the thousands. It’s astonishing.”
Shane Gross’s picture of a swarm of tadpoles in B.C. is the grand winner of the annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards. He told As It Happens host Nil Köksal his win was unexpected, and “signals a bit of a shift in our industry that we are appreciating the little things a little bit more.”
Gross said he has entered the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition every year since 2011, and has had some “highly commended” photos before, but this is the first time he’s won even a category.
“The jury was captivated by the mix of light, energy and connectivity between the environment and the tadpoles,” said jury chair Kathy Moran in a news release.
Competition judge Tony Wu said in a statement that Gross’s photo “immerses us in an epic migration of tiny tadpoles, a scene that most of us would have never imagined existed. By putting us in the midst of this movement of millions, they highlight the fact that beauty and magic exist everywhere, even in the most mundane of settings.”
Gross said wetlands are often overlooked, despite their importance for protecting against droughts and floods. He hopes being featured in this year’s winning photo “ups wetlands on the conservation radar.”
Gross’s work was previously featured in a 2020 CBC News documentary titled Shane Gross: Capturing humanity’s impact on ocean life.
Canadian wildlife conservation photographer Shane Gross has won awards for capturing ocean life and humanity’s impact on it. He tells The National’s co-host Andrew Chang about his mission to create emotional connections with his photographs that will hopefully lead to lasting change.
Host/Reporter: Andrew Chang
Producer: Sean Brocklehurst
Camera/Editor: Jared Thomas
Tinker-Tsavalas said he started doing photography when he was 10 years old, largely because of his interest in nature (two uncles and a grandfather are biologists). He soon became fascinated in macro photography of very small creatures such as insects.
His winning photo was a rare and hoped-for opportunity to see two of his favourite organisms, springtails and slime moulds, close enough to be together in the same frame.
Springtails are found in places such as soil, or under rocks or dead logs, and are very small — the one he photographed was only two millimetres long.
“One of the best things for me about having a place in the competition is that for so many people, it’ll be the first time they see something like this,” he said.
He hopes it will make more people interested in the subjects of his photo, which have an important role in nature, helping decompose dead organisms and recycle nutrients.
He added that for those who look, springtails are “pretty much everywhere,” and during a visit to the Ottawa area this summer, he found quite a few species he had never seen before.
In details about Marriott’s photo, the museum says the photographer had been tracking the lynx for nearly a week by snowshoe, keeping his distance so as not to spook them. It also highlights the threat to wildlife, noting climate change has reduced the prey available to lynx.
Marriott attracted national attention in 2020 when he captured a showdown between two grizzlies, known as the Boss and Split Lip, fighting in Banff National Park.
He said he’s been a runner-up in the portrait category before, and has previously been nominated for the people’s choice award, but said being able to attend the ceremony at one of London’s best known museums as a winner was “an amazing thing.”
It’s a wildlife photographer’s dream to see a showdown between two of Banff’s most notorious grizzlies (from a safe distance, of course!).
“It’s fascinating and mind-blowing,” to be surrounded by some of the best wildlife photographers in the world — and know he is among them, he said. “For a wildlife photographer, this is the pinnacle … It’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.”
Marriott also praised Gross and expressed his happiness that a Canadian image was the grand title winner. “It’s like the Stanley Cup,” he said.
The Wildlife Photographer of the Year award was founded in 1965.
