Rock Islands Southern Lagoon
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How it came to be
In the southern lagoon of Palau, between Koror and Peleliu, lie 445 uninhabited limestone islands of volcanic origin. Many are shaped like mushrooms, narrow at the waterline, where sponges, bivalves, urchins and other grazers have worn the rock away. The inscribed area covers 100,200 ha.
The islands hold traces of some three thousand years of human life. Rock art on Ulong dates back 2,000 to 3,000 years, and on Ngeruktabel there are quarries for Yapese stone money, with unfinished stones still in place. The stone villages were abandoned in the 17th and 18th centuries, showing how climate change, population growth and the overuse of resources affected small island communities in a marginal marine setting.
The islands hold the densest concentration of marine lakes anywhere, bodies of seawater cut off from the ocean by land, where endemic species are still being discovered. The surrounding reefs support more than 385 coral species, dugongs and at least 13 kinds of shark. The site entered the Tentative List in 2007 and was inscribed in 2012 for both natural and cultural values.
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