Presence was filmed within a specific, internationally significant, inhabited and actively managed marine environment. This page provides the place context that the nine-minute chapter does not attempt to summarize.
Interactive locator for geographic orientation. Markers show San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina. It does not draw Seaflower Biosphere Reserve or Marine Protected Area boundaries. Official geospatial sources should be consulted for legal or management maps.
Recognized through UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Programme in 2000.
A biosphere reserve combines three connected functions.
Declared in 2005 within the wider biosphere reserve.
The protected-area system uses different zones to balance strict conservation, non-extractive use, traditional fishing, research, tourism and other regulated activities.
The Seaflower Marine Protected Area appears on Colombia’s World Heritage Tentative List. It is not currently inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
UNESCO recognition does not mean that UNESCO owns or directly administers the territory. Environmental management is carried out through Colombian and local institutions, including CORALINA and the national-park system.
The environments of Seaflower form a connected system rather than isolated attractions.
Coral reefs, seagrass, mangroves, beaches, lagoons, open ocean and deep-water habitats support different stages and forms of marine life.
Official inventories cited by Colombia’s Ministry of Environment describe exceptional marine biological richness across the reserve.
Totals change as research continues. Species are not identified from Presence footage on this site unless reviewed by a qualified local or scientific expert.
Species totals reflect official inventories cited by Colombia’s Ministry of Environment in 2020 and may change as research continues.
Filmed in Seaflower. Environmental conditions vary between sites and through time.
Seaflower is home to the Raizal people, an Afro-Caribbean community native to San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina.
Their Creole language, maritime knowledge, fishing traditions, foodways and relationship with the sea are part of the reserve’s identity.
The Seaflower Marine Protected Area was developed through a participatory process involving local stakeholders, particularly people whose lives and livelihoods depend on marine resources.
Seaflower is both an ecological system and a cultural territory.
A protected area can still be changed. Presence was filmed within richness—and within the pressures affecting the wider Caribbean.
Extreme temperatures in 2023 caused mass coral bleaching around San Andrés. Bleaching does not always mean immediate coral death, but prolonged heat weakens coral and increases its vulnerability.
Stony coral tissue loss disease has spread through much of the archipelago. CORALINA and its partners are treating priority colonies and monitoring interventions.
Pollution, nutrient-rich wastewater, marine litter, resource overexploitation, vessel impacts and intensive use of popular sites can compound climate stress.
Hurricane Iota struck Providencia in 2020, damaging more than 90% of the island’s infrastructure. UNESCO reports that approximately 70% of its mangroves were destroyed.
Protection is not a label. Across Seaflower, authorities, scientists, fishers, divers, community organizations and residents are engaged in monitoring, management and restoration.
On Providencia, community-led mangrove restoration supported through UNESCO’s MangRes programme combines local knowledge, scientific assessment and long-term monitoring.
On San Andrés, CORALINA and local organizations—including Blue Indigo Foundation—have been treating coral colonies affected by stony coral tissue loss disease and developing coral-reproduction and restoration techniques.
Azul Vivo does not replace this work. It helps make the living environment—and what is at stake within it—perceptible to people who may never enter it directly.
On the ground in Seaflower
Blue Indigo Foundation is a women-led, community-rooted nonprofit based in San Andrés, founded in 2020 to protect and restore marine and coastal ecosystems in the San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina archipelago—inside the UNESCO Seaflower Biosphere Reserve.
Directed by biologist and diver María Fernanda Maya, with scientific coordination from Mariana Gnecco and collaboration with Raizal researchers and fishers, the foundation was created so restoration would not depend only on short project cycles that arrive, finish and leave. Local leadership stays when the season ends.
Their work includes coral nurseries and transplantation (including Acropora on rope and table systems), training for divers and community partners, and participation in national efforts such as Colombia’s “One Million Corals” programme. They have also advanced hybrid green–grey reef approaches that combine engineered structure with living coral to strengthen barrier reefs that protect coasts, infrastructure and ancestral Raizal properties from storm surge.
Blue Indigo works with diving schools and island partners so visitors and residents can take part in restoration practice—not as a spectacle, but as stewardship of a living system that fisheries, tourism and shoreline safety all depend on.
The immersive chapter creates the encounter. This page and the education programme provide the context.
Presence concentrates on coral-reef observation. It does not summarize Seaflower’s ecology, culture or conservation challenges in nine minutes.
Presence is the encounter. Seaflower is the context.
Presence →Local women-led NGO working on marine restoration in the San Andrés Archipelago.
Profile of Blue Indigo Foundation’s coral-restoration work in the biosphere reserve.
World Heritage Tentative List documentation — not a World Heritage designation.