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Biscayne National Park
Biscayne National Park is one of the largest marine parks in the National Park System. Located just south of Miami and about nine miles east of Homestead, the park protects four distinct but interrelated ecosystems, including a series of more than 40 small coral rock islands (keys), a bay community, a mangrove shoreline, and the northernmost coral reef in the United States. This is the only place in the world where a living coral reef lies immediately adjacent to a major urban region (conurbation) with millions of people.
The largest feature of the park is Biscayne Bay, which lies to the west of the north-south trending chain of coral islands. The Atlantic Ocean lies to the east, and it is on this side that the living coral reef is located. The reef belongs to the world’s third-largest barrier reef system, a 2,600-square mile complex that begins at Biscayne Bay, extends southward and westward along the Atlantic edge of the Keys, includes the Dry Tortugas, and wraps up the Gulf Coast of the Keys to Florida Bay at the edge of Everglades National Park.
Biscayne is principally a watery realm. The authorized boundary of the park encompasses nearly 300 square miles, but less than five percent of it (about 4,400 acres) is actually dry land on the keys and mainland. The other 95 percent of the park is open water interspersed with about 100 patch reefs.
Biscayne National Park is busiest on calm, sunny weekends in the spring, summer and fall. Access to the keys is only by boat, since there are no bridges, causeways, or roads connecting the keys with the mainland or with each other. (The park has only one mile of paved roadway.) Although the park concessionaire offers boat trips, there is no regularly scheduled boat service to the islands.
for more details and info:
http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com...#comment-16535
To see maps of the park and the park vicinity, visit this site.
http://www.nps.gov/bisc/planyourvisit/maps.htm
http://www.nps.gov/bisc/index.htm
http://www.nps.gov/ever/index.htm
The largest feature of the park is Biscayne Bay, which lies to the west of the north-south trending chain of coral islands. The Atlantic Ocean lies to the east, and it is on this side that the living coral reef is located. The reef belongs to the world’s third-largest barrier reef system, a 2,600-square mile complex that begins at Biscayne Bay, extends southward and westward along the Atlantic edge of the Keys, includes the Dry Tortugas, and wraps up the Gulf Coast of the Keys to Florida Bay at the edge of Everglades National Park.
Biscayne is principally a watery realm. The authorized boundary of the park encompasses nearly 300 square miles, but less than five percent of it (about 4,400 acres) is actually dry land on the keys and mainland. The other 95 percent of the park is open water interspersed with about 100 patch reefs.
Biscayne National Park is busiest on calm, sunny weekends in the spring, summer and fall. Access to the keys is only by boat, since there are no bridges, causeways, or roads connecting the keys with the mainland or with each other. (The park has only one mile of paved roadway.) Although the park concessionaire offers boat trips, there is no regularly scheduled boat service to the islands.
for more details and info:
http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com...#comment-16535
To see maps of the park and the park vicinity, visit this site.
http://www.nps.gov/bisc/planyourvisit/maps.htm
http://www.nps.gov/bisc/index.htm
http://www.nps.gov/ever/index.htm