- Animals
- Last of the Wild
Colorful fish makes a splash as the 9,000th animal in our Photo Ark
The bandula barb, a colorful but critically endangered fish found in one stream in Sri Lanka, has recently rebounded but faces many threats.
Species are fizzling out of existence at a rate faster than any other time in human history—and no one is more aware of that fact than National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore.
Sartore is the founder of the Photo Ark, a 25-year documentary project aimed at photographing captive animals in danger of disappearing in the wild. This unprecedented archive of global biodiversity contains images of imperiled animals large and small, from the mighty African elephant to the humble St. Andrew beach mouse. [Learn more about the Photo Ark]
After 13 years of adding new animals to his archive, Sartore’s modern-day Noah’s ark now contains 9,000 species.
The momentous 9,000th addition was none other than the bandula barb. If you’ve never heard
