World Heritage List
The Most Remarkable Reef in the West
Indies"
So Charles Darwin referred to the Belize Barrier Reef in 1842, in his study
of the origin and evolution of coral reefs. Since then
it has become
renowned as the largest barrier reef in the Western Hemisphere. Nearly 260km
long, it runs from the northern
border of the country, where it is only
about 1km offshore, south to the Sapodilla Cayes which lie some 40km offshore.
Belize also has one of the most diverse reef ecosystems in the world, with
all the main types of reef represented: fringing reefs
along the mainland
coast; the Barrier Reef itself which grows along the edge of the continental
shelf, separated from the
mainland by the lagoon; and three offshore atolls
(Lighthouse Reef, Turneffe Atoll and Glovers Reef). The presence of atolls is
unusual. Most atolls are found in the Pacific, where they form on the top of
submerged volcanoes. Very few occur in the
Caribbean, and they differ in
structure, the three in Belize for example lying on non-volcanic submarine
ridges
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