Fish Rescue Secures New Scientist Editor Award at EarthPhoto 2025

The essence of this image lies in restoring the traditional way of life, captured by Vivienne Wang, whose work is part of the series that earned the New Scientist Editor’s Award at the Earth Photo 2025 Competition.

The photograph illustrates the Yurok community collaborating with biologists and engineers to install a rotary screw trap on the Trinity River, a key tributary of the Klamath River in Willow Creek, California. The team employs fish traps to assess the health of the salmon and examine their migration behaviors.

The Klamath Basin is central to Yurok existence, holding significant cultural and spiritual importance through its rich waters that support Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha). However, 19th-century colonization displaced the Yurok tribe and depleted local resources through mining, logging, and damming efforts.

Climate change and diverted river flows have severely affected salmon populations. A new irrigation policy in 2002 resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Chinook salmon in the Klamath River, adding urgency to the decades-long initiative to remove river dams. Notably, the last dam on this river was demolished last year.

For Wang, the mission was to illuminate how Indigenous communities could lead the charge for environmental justice. “We aspire for viewers to gain respect for the resilience, culture, and ongoing struggle of the Yurok people as they work to safeguard the Klamath Basin,” she remarks.

In the image below, Yurok Fisheries technician Hunter Mattz examines monitors that reveal enlarged salmon scales, gathering valuable insights into mortality factors sourced from fishing and natural causes. This information is crucial for determining sustainable catch limits and spawning goals, as well as assessing run sizes, which indicate the number of salmon entering a river or stream within a specific timeframe.

In this scene, Mattz holds a slender tag on a needle, contributing critical data to the fish monitoring research program.

Mattz also manages the Net Harvest Project, which entails traversing over 70km from the Pacific Ocean to the estuary’s mouth and into the heart of the Klamath Basin, including stretches beyond Blue Creeks in California. Collecting data on fish species caught by local residents through nets has been pivotal in securing funding for conservation efforts in the Klamath region.

All winners of the Earth Photography Competition were chosen by a panel including New Scientist photo editor Tim Bodhuis and David Stock, director of editorial videos. Before touring the UK, make sure to visit the Earth Photo 2025 exhibition at London’s Royal Geographical Society until August 20th.