A swirl of sunlight-dappled jack fish, spinning as a single entity, symbolizes peril and promise, according to the scientist who captured the award-winning image one summer morning. The photo is also a nod to the researcher’s perseverance. For the past eight years, coral reef ecologist Kristen Brown, currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, has done fieldwork off Heron Island. It’s a tiny, sandy, low-lying speck sitting atop a coral reef, nearly 50 miles off the coast of Queensland, Australia. Earlier this year, Brown and colleagues spent several…
