Fringing Reef

A fringing reef is one of the three main types of coral reef, distinguished from the other two, barrier reefs and atolls, by having either a shallow lagoon behind it or no backreef zone at all. Where a fringing reef grows directly from the shoreline its reef flat extends all the way to the beach, but in other cases it can grow hundreds of yards offshore with an extensive backreef area in between. Fringing reefs occur off the coasts of places including the Philippines, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, western Australia, the Caribbean, East Africa and the Red Sea, and Charles Darwin believed they were the first kind of reef to form around a landmass in the long term process of reef growth. The largest fringing reef in the world is the Ningaloo Reef, which stretches about 260 kilometers along the coast of Western Australia.