Poé Beach - New Caledonia

My very st card from New Caledonia, a dependent overseas territory of France lying in the western Pacific Ocean. Marie "vykorsfantast" is trying to get wolf card for her husband and i asked her if she would like to trade this card for a wolf card. I wanted this card because it's from one of my french missing Unesco sites, Lagoons of New Caledonia: Reef Diversity and Associated Ecosystems.

This serial site comprises six marine clusters that represent the main diversity of coral reefs and associated ecosystems in the French Pacific Ocean archipelago of New Caledonia and one of the three most extensive reef systems in the world. These Lagoons are of exceptional natural beauty. They feature an exceptional diversity of coral and fish species and a continuum of habitats from mangroves to seagrasses with the world’s most diverse concentration of reef structures. The Lagoons of New Caledonia display intact ecosystems, with healthy populations of large predators, and a great number and diversity of big fish. They provide habitat to a number of emblematic or threatened marine species such as turtles, whales or dugongs whose population here is the third largest in the world. - in: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1115

Photo by Pierre Alain Pantz

The card shows the Poé Beach at Bourail, a small town on the island of Grande Terre.

Its Lagoon is considered the most beautiful on the Grande Terre island. It is a 17 km of white sand beach. Despite the presence of algae at the edge, the variety of fish and beautiful color of the lagoon makes it registered since 2008 in the world heritage of the UNESCO. Glass bottom boats can taken visitors on the lagoon. The tides are important, sometimes so the water level is low, we can see the flats of coral. Many shells (including of giant clam) are reduced on the beach by the sea.