Lewis Burnett’s underwater seahorse photo shortlisted for Australian nature prize

Lewis Burnett’s underwater frame “Fairyfloss” has landed on the shortlist for the 2026 Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year, with a tiger snout seahorse floating among soft corals off Western Australia. It was selected in the Animals In Nature category, where delicacy counts as much as rarity.

The image shows Hippocampus subelongatus, also known as the tiger snout seahorse or West Australian seahorse, a species that the IUCN Red List classifies as Data Deficient. The listing says more research is needed to assess it properly, even though the species is protected from exploitation across its range. Western Australian authorities describe it as endemic to the state’s waters and growing to about 22 cm, while the IUCN notes possible pressure from aquarium collection and localized coastal habitat degeneration.

That mix of scarcity and fragility is part of what makes Burnett’s picture stand out. In a field crowded with dramatic predators and wide-angle seascapes, a small seahorse framed cleanly against soft coral asks for patience, careful buoyancy and a very controlled approach to composition. The payoff is a picture that reads as graceful rather than clinical, with the animal held in the frame as a living subject, not a specimen.

Burnett, a wildlife photographer and tour guide based in Bridgetown in the South-West of Western Australia, has built a reputation around finding endemic wildlife in biodiverse places. That background matters here. A photograph like “Fairyfloss” is not about chasing a rare animal once and hoping for luck; it is about knowing where uncommon species live, how they hold themselves in the water and when they are most likely to offer a usable angle for the camera.

The 2026 shortlist includes 100 images drawn from more than 2,000 entries, with one account putting the field at 2,129 submissions from 501 photographers in 17 countries. The competition, now in its 23rd year and owned and produced by the South Australian Museum, covers the ANZANG bioregion, Australia, New Zealand, Antarctica and New Guinea. Winners are due to be announced on Thursday 27 August 2026.

Dr Samantha Hamilton, the museum’s director, called the shortlisted images incredible and said the environmental messages they carry are beautiful and poignant. Burnett’s seahorse frame fits that brief without leaning on spectacle. It works because the subject is uncommon, the coral setting is restrained, and the photographer lets the animal’s small scale do the heavy lifting.