Monday, March 5, 2012

The world's largest coral reefs area

If you are a fan of underwater tours, of course, you will admire the beauty of the various species of coral that grow on the seabed. Starting from Acropora digitifera species shaped like a round-table until types of Acropora cervicornis with a cylindrical shape with many branches. Coral reef can be interpreted as a collection of marine animals that form the reef, then similar symbiosis with other plants, such as algae or zooxanhellae. Due to the active biological activity below sea level, the physical structure of coral reefs formed of calcium carbonate sediments.


Most coral reefs are living on the edge of the sea, approximately 50 meters below sea level, and still exposed to sunlight which is used as oxygen for life. However, there is also a living coral reef deep down the sea without getting light or no longer require sunlight. Coral reefs, providing habitat for various species of marine plants, marine animals, and other marine microorganisms are not yet known. Many of the benefits generated by a coral reef on the seabed and do you know where is the center of world's largest coral reef? If you ever dive in Bunaken sea, banda sea, and the Raja Ampat Islands, you are definitely not wrong to answer the questions above. Indonesia! yup, Indonesia is the center of the world's largest coral reef.


The region with cluster of beautiful coral and largest in the world's is called coral triangle region. This area includes Filipinos, Indonesia, Timor Leste, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. If the boundary line drawn surrounding coral reefs in the six countries, that's will resemble the shape of triangle. That is why the region is referred as the world's coral triangle.

Estimated from the total area of coral reefs in the world which reach 284 300 km2, 18% of them are in Indonesian territory. Total area of coral reefs in the triangle about 85 200 km2 . It also deals with Indonesia which as the largest maritime country in the world with 93 thousand km2 marine area. Today, the islands of Raja Ampat in West Papua is an archipelago with the highest number of coral species in the world.

Based on an ecological study led by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) by involving the experts of coral reefs and fish of the world in 2002, found about 537 species of coral and 1074 species of fish in the islands of Raja Ampat. The number of coral species in Raja Ampat is 75% of all the world's coral reefs have ever been found. Although the Caribbean islands in Central America and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in Australia are well known, the region has only about 400 species of coral.




Several islands in Indonesia which is also has a fairly high coral species is the Komodo island (West Timor), Bunaken (North Sulawesi), Nusa Penida (Bali), Wakatobi (Southeast Sulawesi), Derawan Islands (East Kalimantan), and Cenderawasih Bay (Papua ). The archipelago are also being a major goal of nautical tourism, especially for diving. So it is not wrong if you go to Indonesia with the aim to dive in the beauty of the underwater panorama, because Indonesia is the center of largest coral reefs in the world's.

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