Bunaken

Bunaken National Park was established in 1991 off the coast of Manado, in northern Sulawesi, and protects some 890 km², the overwhelming majority marine, around the islands of Bunaken, Manado Tua, Siladen, Mantehage and Nain, plus a stretch of mainland coast.

Its distinctive feature is the topography: the reefs fringing the islands end abruptly in vertical walls that drop hundreds of metres, and that combination of clear water, nutrient-rich currents and sheer drop produces an extraordinary density of life in very little space. Several hundred coral species and more than seventy genera have been recorded, alongside a highly diverse reef fish fauna. Bunaken was one of Indonesia's first marine parks and remains one of the best-known dive destinations in Asia.

The park also protects mangroves and seagrass meadows, especially on Mantehage, which act as a nursery for fish and support dugongs and turtles. In the deep waters around Manado, specimens of the Indonesian coelacanth have been caught, the fish regarded as a living fossil whose presence in the area was documented in the late 1990s. In 2020 UNESCO designated the Bunaken Tangkoko Minahasa Biosphere Reserve, of some 746,412 hectares, which brings the marine park together with terrestrial areas of northern Sulawesi.