Montego Bay Marine Park

Why go

It is the reason a swim in Montego Bay can be a look at a reef. The park runs along the city's shoreline and protects fringing reef, seagrass beds and mangrove wetland, and you are in it the moment you swim off Doctor's Cave.

Very few cities have this. Snorkelling usually means arranging a boat; here it means bringing a mask to the beach you were going to anyway.

Where it fits

This is not somewhere you travel to. It is the water you are already in, which makes it the easiest thing on any Montego Bay list to actually do.

Half an hour with a mask changes what a beach afternoon is. A dive or a boat trip is a different plan again, and both start from the same water.

Good to know

• It is a designation, not a gate

  You reach the park from a beach or from a boat. There is no entrance to it, because you are in it as soon as you are in the water along this shore.

• Declared in 1992

  The park was declared in August 1992 after nearly thirty years of conservation advocacy, and covers roughly fifteen square kilometres of the bay.

• Two fish sanctuaries sit inside it

  Bogue Lagoon, a fish sanctuary since February 1979, and Airport Point, designated in June 2009. Both are managed more strictly than the rest of the park.

• It is managed by a trust

  The Montego Bay Marine Park Trust has co-managed the park with the national authority since 1996. It is a non profit rather than an attraction operator.

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