Belize Barrier Reef

This is the peak tourist Belize popular destination for scuba diving and snorkeling and pulled her nearly half from 260,000 visitors, and vital to the fishing industry.

Charles Darwin described it as "the most remarkable reef in the West Indies" in 1842.


Belize Barrier Reef is home to a large diversity of plants and animals, one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world:

      * 70 types of hard coral
      * 36 species of soft corals
      * 500 species of fish
      * hundreds of species of invertebrates

With 90% of coral still need to be investigated, it is estimated that only 10% of all species have been found.

Belize Barrier Reef is a series of Belize reefs straddling the coast, about 300 meters (1,000 feet) off the coast in the north and 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of the country's boundaries. Belize Barrier Reef is 300 kilometers (186 miles) long section of 900 kilometers (560 miles) long Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System, which continuously from Cancún on the northeastern tip of the Riviera Maya Yucatán Peninsula to Honduras to make the second largest coral reef system in the world after Great Barrier Reef in Australia.