Lagunas de Nueva Caledonia

The Lagoons of New Caledonia were inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2008 under the full title "Lagoons of New Caledonia: Reef Diversity and Associated Ecosystems". The property is serial and brings together six marine clusters around Grande Terre and the nearby islands, in the south-western Pacific.

The New Caledonian barrier reef is the second longest in the world after the Australian Great Barrier Reef and encloses one of the most extensive lagoons on the planet. What UNESCO recognised was not merely its size but its diversity: the property brings together practically every known type of reef formation — fringing reefs, barrier reefs, atolls, double-barrier reefs — and a complete gradation of habitats from mangrove and seagrass meadow to abyssal bottoms.

That variety supports a very high marine biodiversity, with hundreds of coral species and thousands of fish, as well as significant populations of dugong, green turtles that nest on its cays, and the nautilus, a mollusc regarded as a living fossil. The reefs also have a central place in Kanak culture and in the local economy. The main threats are run-off from nickel mining, heavily developed on Grande Terre, overfishing, and bleaching associated with the warming of the sea.