Clear Sea Water In The Wakatobi

Wakatobi is the name of an archipelago located in an area of Sulawesi Tenggara (South Eastern), Indonesia. The name Wakatobi is derived from the names of the main islands that form the archipelago: Wangiwangi Island, Kaledupa, Tomea, and Binongko. The group is part of a larger group called the Tukangbesi Islands.

The archipelago, located in the biodiverse hotspot known as Wallacea. The Wakatobi is also home to Operation Wallacea, a UK based for non-profit conservation group looking at sustainable development of fisheries and coral reef research. An independent non-commercial website [1] has been set up about the marine park. This website contains tourist and travel information about the wakatobi, with additional resources about the biodiversity, conservation and local people.

Wakatobi is one of the Regencies in South-East Sulawesi having its own vision to realize the only real underwater paradise at the world's coral reef triangle center. This visionary vision has a strong reason that beside as the richest site in coral reef collection and as the most beautiful site, (Operation Wallacea 2006) Wakatobi is also situated geographically at the world's coral reef triangle center with its 942 fish species and 750 coral reef species from total 850 of world's collection comparing to the two world's famous diving center like Caribbean Sea that owes only 50 species and other 300 coral reef species in the Red Sea, Egypt.

Beside the underwater beauty, Wakatobi has also other beauty and richness such as white sandy beach, clear sea water, sunset in every islands edge, historical ruins like ancient fortresses and cannon that spread out in the four main islands, old village with its pillar house, traditional waving, blacksmiths, Bajo tribe and various particular dances. This nature and culture heritages put Wakatobi as the world's famous marine tourism objects.

Wakatobi is well-known as the Tukang Besi Island in the map and it is the abbreviation of four main islands name which are: WA (Wangi-wangi), KA (Kaledupa), TO (Tomia) and BI (Binongko), covers an area of 1.400.000 hectares and the coral reef places 90.000 hectares from the total area. The island is also famous as the second largest Barrier after the Great Barrier Reef in Australia consists of 39 islands and 7 of them are inhabited with the total population of 100.563, while the rest remain uninhabited.

Beside as the regency, Wakatobi is also known as the National Park, often called as Wakatobi National Park (TNKW) and it gives the unique characteristic of the regency in Indonesia even in the world having the same width with the National Park area. The unique of the island makes Wakatobi more strong and realistic in the effort of maintaining its underwater beauty and preservation as well as other heritages to place Wakatobi as the underwater marine tourism object and the prominent cultural tourism object that is incomparable with other marine tourism places to be visited by anyone.