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 — the fish regarded as a living fossil, whose presence in the area was documented in the late 1990s — have been caught. 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.