This seal is very cute. So adorable, in fact, that public voters couldn’t help but award it the top prize in the People’s Choice category for this year’s Ocean Conservancy Photo Contest. Photographer Nicole Pellegrino captured this image on a bright sunny day at the shore of Long Beach in New York. June in the U.S. is National Ocean Month. To celebrate the occasion, the Ocean Conservancy hosts a photography contest to highlight moments that “evoke a strong emotional response [and] make the viewer feel a connection to the ocean,” as Megan Bennett, the nonprofit’s outreach manager, told Smithsonian Magazine. And this year, over 1,000 “ocean lovers” answered the call, according to the winner announcement. In this blog, we’ve picked out some of our favorites from the final shortlist, but you can see the entire gallery here.
Walrus Nursing © Richard Rothstein/2026 Ocean Conservancy Photo Contest To start, here’s the entry that won the grand prize, adjudicated by an expert panel of judges. Photographer Richard Rothstein was traveling in Norway when he encountered a pair of female walruses sitting protectively around a small calf.
“We remained a very respectable distance and did not approach,” Rothstein said in the statement. “The walruses seemed to completely tolerate our presence as there appeared to be no alteration of their natural behavior.” Contest judge and two-time winner of the photo contest Angela Farmer praised the photograph’s “tenderness,” describing it as a “quiet, intimate family portrait set against the fragile backdrop of the sea ice these animals depend on.”
