Indonesia has established Southeast Asia's largest marine park in the Savu Sea, a migration route for almost half the world's whale species and home to vast tracts of rare coral, the country's fisheries minister said.
The Savu Marine National Park, launched at the World Ocean Conference in Manado, Sulawesi, will cover 3.5 million hectares (8.649 million acres) in an area of 500 species of coral, 14 species of whales and 336 species of fish living in the Savu Sea near Flores in eastern Indonesia.
"It's a beautiful place and it's now the largest marine protected area in the Coral Triangle," she said.
"However, enforcement is one of the key questions we need to work out. It could be a combination of community-based and government patrols."
The Coral Triangle also faces pressure from climate change and reefs could disappear by the end of this century unless countries slash carbon emissions from their current levels, a report commissioned by the WWF warned this week.
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