Apo Reef Marine Natural Park
| Apo Reef Marine Natural Park | |||
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| Location: | Philippines | ||
| Specialty: | Occidental Mindoro | ||
| Next city: | Sablayan | ||
| Surface: | 274.69 km² | ||
| Founding: | September 6, 1996 | ||
The Apo Reef Marine Natural Park covers an area of 27,469 hectares and is located west of Mindoro Island on the Mindoro Strait in the western Philippines . The Apo Reef Natural Park buffer zone is attached to the primary reserve . This extends over an area of 11,702 hectares around the protected area. The area of the protected area is defined here as the area of the coral structures plus a 500-meter ring zone as a direct protected area and the area of the buffer zone.
The protected area was proclaimed on September 6, 1996 with Presidential Decree No. 868; this shows the protected area in the category of maritime nature park .
There are three smaller islands in the nature park, Apo Island , as well as Binangaan and Cayos del Bajo Tinangkapang . The largest island, Apo Island, covers an area of approximately 22 hectares and is covered with mangroves and other coastal vegetation. Binangaan is a rocky limestone formation with little vegetation; Cayos del Bajo Tinangkapang is an area of 200-300 m², a coral bank that rises above sea level and has no vegetation.
The coral reefs in the Apo Reef Marine Natural Park are after the Danajon reef system , before Bohol , the second largest coral reef complexes in the Philippines and form three coral reefs on an area of about 26 km × 20 km. They cover a total of around 15,800 hectares. The reef complex consists primarily of two triangular large coral bank structures, both of which are constructed like an atoll . Both have a shallow, up to two meters deep, large lagoon area in the center. Both large coral structures are separated by the approximately 30 meter deep sea trench, a total of only about 29 hectares are above water. The third reef is the Apo Reef and is about a kilometer further west, outside the two large coral bank structures, and is an isolated coral bank on which Apo Island is located with its famous lighthouse . Cayos del Bajo Tinangkapang Island is to the north and Binangaan is to the south of the structure. Right on the fringing reef edges, the coral reefs drop in steep, sometimes vertical walls five to eighty meters into the depth.
The name Apo Reef Marine Natural Park was chosen because of its proximity to the Apo Reef. The already very high level of awareness of the Apo reef should also be used to continue to attract diving tourism to the nature park. The Apo Reef Marine Natural Park stands since 2006 on the proposed list of the Philippines for inclusion in the list of World Heritage of UNESCO .