Photo Contest Winners

On Friday night we announced the 10 finalists and the Grand Prize winner of the Photo Contest to raise awareness for the Micronesia Challenge. Here are a few of the top 10:

Leslie Ware won the Grand Prize with his photo of a Fairy Tern flying in front of some Flame Trees. He won a one night stay at Aqua Resort and lunch for two at Grand Hotel.

He also had two other photos chosen as top 10 finalists:

These next two photos were taken by Takahiro Noguchi. If I had been a judge, I would have chosen the picture of the fish as the Grand Prize winner (Sorry, Les).

Laura Williams from Division of Fish & Wildlife submitted this photo of Bikkia tetrandra:

I'm not sure if the judges have a sense of humor or if this is just a coincidence, but Harry Blalock's photo of a hermit crab was chosen as a finalist:

This photo of Yoshimi Yanagasawa and her Mom was also chosen:

Aya Matsumoto had two photos in the top 10:

Here are two of the winning photographers accepting their Beautify CNMI prize packs:

Each Beautify CNMI giftpack includes one of our turtle bags, two t-shirts, several bumper stickers, and a limited edition Beautify CNMI mug.

They are limited edition because I dropped the bag they were in and about 1/4 of them broke.

Oops.

The top 10 finalists and 10 Honorable Mentions were on display at our event at the Grand Hotel on Friday.

After the announcement of the winners we had a public forum hosted by Marianas Resource Conservation & Development Council (that's me). Over 30 people participated, including several public school teachers. Dr. Peter Houk, Biologist from Division of Environmental Quality, and Greg Moretti, Marine Protected Area Specialist from NOAA, presented on some of the work they are doing concerning the Micronesia Challenge.

Afterwards we had a long question & answer session.

The event was a success.

Thank you, Aqua Resort, Grand Hotel,and Marianas RC&D for providing prizes!

Thank you, Grand Hotel for hosting the event!

Thank you, Marianas RC&D for paying!