Qualla: Bunaken National Park

Bunaken National Park: Introduction

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User: (WT-shared) Jpatokal at wts wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 3.0. Drop below the surface off Bunaken Island and the reef does not slope gently into the depths. It falls. Vertical coral walls plunge 25 to 50 meters straight down, encrusted with 13 genera of hard coral, swarming with fish whose combined species count represents more than 70 percent of everything known to swim in the Indo-Western Pacific. Bunaken National Park protects 890 square kilometers of this underwater world off the northern tip of Sulawesi, Indonesia, and it sits at the geographic center of the Coral Triangle -- the patch of ocean between the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands that holds the highest marine biodiversity on Earth.

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Image: User: (WT-shared) Jpatokal at wts wikivoyage | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bunaken National Park: Five Islands, Ninety-Seven Percent Sea

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User: (WT-shared) Jpatokal at wts wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 3.0. Established in 1991 as one of Indonesia's first marine parks, Bunaken National Park is overwhelmingly water. Ninety-seven percent of its area is marine habitat. The remaining three percent is land, distributed across five islands: Bunaken, Manado Tua, Mantehage, Nain, and Siladen...

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Image: User: (WT-shared) Jpatokal at wts wikivoyage | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bunaken National Park: Walls of Coral, Chambers of Nautilus

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Santje9822, CC BY-SA 4.0. The park's signature feature is its fringing and barrier reef system, dominated by the vertical coral walls that give Bunaken its reputation among divers. These walls host 390 species of coral and an ecosystem that extends from the sunlit surface to the darkness below 50 meters. ...

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Image: Santje9822 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Bunaken National Park: Macaques on Shore, Cuscus in the Canopy

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sakurai Midori, CC BY-SA 3.0. Above the waterline, the park's terrestrial life is surprisingly rich for such small islands. Palm, sago, woka, silar, and coconut trees cover the land. The Celebes crested macaque, an endangered primate found nowhere outside Sulawesi, inhabits the forested areas alongside Timor ...

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Image: Sakurai Midori | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bunaken National Park: Thirty Thousand Visitors and a River of Plastic

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sakurai Midori, CC BY-SA 3.0. Tourism arrived early and grew steadily. Between 2003 and 2006, annual visitor numbers ranged from 32,000 to 39,000, with 8,000 to 10,000 international tourists each year. Accommodations span from backpacker cottages on the beach to five-star dive resorts. The tourism economy has...

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Image: Sakurai Midori | CC BY-SA 3.0