Lagoons of New Caledonia, World's Third Largest Coral Reef Structure

Located in New Caledonia in the South Pacific, the Lagoons of New Caledonia is composed of six marine clusters that represent the main diversity of coral reefs and associated ecosystems in the French Pacific Ocean archipelago of New Caledonia. It's the third largest coral reef structure in the world.

One of the islands of New Caledonia (Source: nationalgeographic.com)

The lagoons features an exceptional diversity of coral and fish species and a continuum of habitats from mangroves to sea grasses. It display intact ecosystems, with healthy populations of large predators, and a great number and diversity of big fish. The reef systems provide habitat to a number of threatened fish, turtles, and marine mammals, including the third largest population of dugongs in the world. These Lagoons are of exceptional natural beauty, and contain reefs of varying age from living reefs to ancient fossil reefs, providing an important source of information on the natural history of Oceania.