The photo depicting a curious sea lion examining a discarded face mask at the Breakwater dive site in Monterey, California, won the first prize in the World Press Photo competition 2021 in the category “Environment, Singles”.
It demonstrates interdiscursivity as a discursive strategy by combining the pollution of the oceans with the face mask as an iconic image of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic and world-wide (human) health concerns. I creates an ambiguous effect as the mask is necessary to curb the spread of the pandemic (i.e. positively connoted) but it can have negative implications in terms of production and waste removal.