Sanganeb

Sanganeb Marine National Park was established in 1990 off the Sudanese Red Sea coast, some twenty-five kilometres north-east of Port Sudan, and protects around 260 km². In 2016 UNESCO inscribed it on the World Heritage List together with Dungonab Bay and Mukkawar Island, in a serial property of two components.

Sanganeb is a singular coral structure: the only true atoll in the Red Sea, isolated on the continental shelf and surrounded by depths of several hundred metres. Its vertical walls, swept by nutrient-rich currents, support a coral community of great diversity and draw concentrations of large pelagics, with schools of hammerhead shark among the most notable in the world. At its centre stands a lighthouse built by the British in the nineteenth century, still operating.

The second component, Dungonab Bay, protects seagrass meadows, mangroves and reefs in a shallow area, and holds an important population of dugong and marine turtles, as well as being an aggregation site for whale shark. The isolation of the Red Sea, with its high salinity and high degree of endemism, gives the whole a particular evolutionary value.