Grantee Jennifer Adler Wins Earth Photo Award

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Grantee Jennifer Adler won the climate category of the 2024 Earth Photo Awards for her photos of scientist Roxane Boonstra inspecting corals in a Florida nursery, part of Adler’s Pulitzer Center project The Uncertain Future of America’s Most Iconic Coral Reef with Benji Jones for Vox.

The Earth Photo Awards recognize photographers and filmmakers from across the world whose images tell compelling stories about our planet. This year’s award winners were chosen from 1,900 entries by a judging panel of experts, according to Earth Photo.

“Informed by scientific background, Adler uses imagery to communicate science and conservation. The goal of her work is to bring ocean science out of the pages of peer reviewed journals and into the mainstream media and classrooms,” says the awards announcement.

“Incredibly grateful to everyone who made this reporting possible, from the Pulitzer Center and Vox to reporter Benji Jones and the Coral Restoration Foundation,” Adler said on LinkedIn following the awards announcement. “I honestly don't submit to many photo contests, but finding out I won the Climate Change category of Earth Photo last week has been a mix of exciting and heartbreaking: I'm sad that images like this exist and to see the other powerful photos showing so much destruction of our planet BUT also happy that there are humans who care doing incredible work in our oceans.”

Her Pulitzer Center-supported reporting project gives a close-up view of the Florida Keys coral reef and how it is endangered by climate change. Warming waters cause coral “bleaching”—when coral turns white because it is starved of the algae it needs to survive. Recent years have seen mass bleaching in the Florida Keys, where reef cover has decreased by 90%. 

This is not only bad for the environment, but also for people: “Coral reefs function like seawalls, helping limit life-threatening storm surge during hurricanes; they’re the engine of the region’s tourism economy; and they provide a home to as much as a quarter of all marine life including fish that people eat,” Adler and Jones report. Their reporting investigates what this means for Florida and for coral reefs around the world. 

However, their project also offers potential solutions: Scientists are busy at work selectively breeding corals in labs to create more heat-resilient offspring. One lab is even unleashing an “army of crabs” into the ocean to eat seaweed that chokes coral, making it hard for it to grow.

Read the reporting here and see the full list of Earth Photo award winners here.