International Day for the Conservation of the Mangrove Ecosystem · Sunrise at the Cayos Cochinos, Honduras
Image: Bing Daily Wallpaper · Sunrise over red mangroves in the Cayos Cochinos, Honduras (© Mac Stone/Tandem Stills + Motion) · Official original image (UHD) (Bing wallpapers are licensed for desktop wallpaper use only)
Open the Bing China homepage today and you'll see a tree standing in the sea. At sunrise over the Cayos Cochinos of Honduras, a red mangrove braces its tangled prop roots on mirror-still water, sky and reflection almost perfectly symmetrical. The caption is just eight Chinese characters — "Where sea meets land, life begins."
This isn't a landscape photo tossed up at random. Dig through Bing's historical archive and you'll find that on July 26, the homepage is given over to mangroves almost every year: a sunset over Sumba Island in Indonesia, the Saloum Delta in Senegal, Jubail Mangrove Park in Abu Dhabi… This year it's the Caribbean's turn. Because today is the International Day for the Conservation of the Mangrove Ecosystem.
Living Between Two Worlds
Mangroves are among the few trees that can stand year-round in saltwater. Specialized prop roots anchor them in soft, oxygen-poor tidal mud; at high tide the roots are submerged in seawater, and at low tide they emerge above the mudflats. According to Bing, these dense root networks dissipate waves, mitigate erosion, and shield coastal communities from storms. Beneath the surface, the gaps between roots shelter juvenile fish, crabs, and shrimp — which is why mangrove forests are called one of the ocean's most productive "nurseries." Mangroves also have a remarkable trick: vivipary. The seeds don't drop to the ground; instead, they germinate on the branch, growing into javelin-like propagules that detach from the parent tree and drop into the tide, drifting until they find a place to take root. The caption's "life begins" isn't metaphor — it's fact.
Why July 26
Behind this observance is a specific person. On July 26, 1998, environmental activist Hayhow Daniel Nanoto took part in a large-scale effort to restore mangrove wetlands in Muisne, Ecuador — where vast tracts of mangrove forest had been cleared to make way for shrimp farms. He suffered a fatal heart attack during the action. In the years that followed, Latin American environmental organizations began commemorating the date on their own; in November 2015, at its 38th General Conference, UNESCO adopted Ecuador's proposal to officially designate July 26 as the International Day for the Conservation of the Mangrove Ecosystem. According to UNESCO data, global mangrove coverage has been cut nearly in half over the past four decades.
Cayos Cochinos
The Cayos Cochinos in the photograph lie roughly thirty kilometers off the northern coast of Honduras — two main islands and thirteen coral cays with a total land area of only about two square kilometers, yet they form part of the world's second-largest barrier reef system, the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef. There are no roads on the islands and no cars. Since 1994, the Honduras Coral Reef Fund has managed the area as a marine reserve; the Garífuna fishermen who have lived on the islands for generations fish only with hand lines. As for the name "Cochinos" — meaning "pigs" — one popular story traces it back to the age of pirates, who are said to have raised pigs on the islands as provisions for their voyages.
The man behind the lens is Mac Stone, a conservation photographer specializing in wetlands and swamps, who later gained fame for his images of the Florida Everglades and a TED talk viewed by over a million people. He has said that his first job after college was teaching children photography in Honduras: he spent two years living in a small village along the Cangrejal River near La Ceiba, using a camera to help local kids discover the nature right outside their doors — and the Cayos Cochinos sit just off that stretch of coast. Nor is this his first Cayos Cochinos image to grace the Bing homepage: back in 2014, a shot he took of mangrove seedlings in the same waters served as the Bing wallpaper for a day.
A tree can stand in the sea because it has learned to live between two worlds — and that is perhaps the message today's wallpaper means to leave with us. Tomorrow the homepage will carry a new image, but as long as the tides keep rising and falling, that mangrove will still be standing where it is.
Sources: UNESCO, Wikipedia, Honduras Coral Reef Fund (HCRF), Peapix Bing Wallpaper Archive, TED