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Belize's reef is a fabled fairyland. Words cannot adequately describe the wondrous, ever-changing world of underwater Belize, the languorous, sometimes breathless silence and the extraordinary colourful nature of its inhabitants: the living corals, the crabs, shrimp and lobster, the conch in its elegant shell and fishes in unending shapes and sizes. One of the richest ecosystems on the planet, Belize's reef is punctuated by scores of beautiful islands, sand bores, patch reefs, and various underwater structures that are home to hundreds of animal and plant species, including 220 types of fish and untold hundreds of invertebrates. So rare and exquisite is this habitat that the United Nations has proposed preservation of the reef as a World Heritage Site, arguing that its deterioration or disappearance would result in "a harmful impoverishment of the heritage of all nations of the world."

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