The Old Providence McBean Lagoon National Natural Park ( es, Parque Nacional Natural Old Providence McBean Lagoon) is a

national park A national park is a nature park, natural park in use for conservation (ethic), conservation purposes, created and protected by national governments. Often it is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state dec ...

located on the northeast side of

Providencia Island Isla de Providencia, historically Old Providence, and generally known as Providencia, is a mountainous Caribbean island that is part of the Colombian department of Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina and the municipality o ...

in the

Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina The Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina ( es, Archipiélago de San Andrés, Providencia y Santa Catalina, ), or San Andrés and Providencia, is one of the departments of Colombia, and the only one in North America. It cons ...

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

. It is one of three national parks in the Colombian Caribbean with coral reefs on its territories, the other two being

Tayrona Tairona (or Tayrona) was a Pre-Columbian culture of Colombia, which consisted in a group of chiefdoms in the region of Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in present-day Cesar, Magdalena and La Guajira Departments of Colombia, South America, which ...

and Rosario and San Bernardo Corals.

General

The area covers (of which 9.05 are maritime) and was declared a national park 1995, partly as a social defense against increased human activity in the form of

time-sharing In computing, time-sharing is the sharing of a computing resource among many users at the same time by means of multiprogramming and multi-tasking.DEC Timesharing (1965), by Peter Clark, The DEC Professional, Volume 1, Number 1 Its emergence a ...

that would destroy a significant part of the area's mangroves. The park contains different ecosystems, such as mangrove forests, coral formations, beds of marine grasses, and a small area of tropical dry forest. Due to the colorful coral reefs, the Providencia Island is also known as "The Sea of Seven Colors" ( es, El Mar de los Siete Colores). Crab Caye and the Three Brothers Cayes form four small islands that are part of the National Park. Average yearly rainfall is 3000 mm, with the largest precipitation occurring in October–November. There is a dry period from January to June. Average temperature is 25 °C and

relative humidity Humidity is the concentration of water vapor present in the air. Water vapor, the gaseous state of water, is generally invisible to the human eye. Humidity indicates the likelihood for precipitation, dew, or fog to be present. Humidity depe ...

73.3%.

Flora and fauna

The mangroves range from – in height. The predominant species is

red mangrove Red mangrove may refer to at least three plant species: * ''Rhizophora mangle'' * ''Rhizophora mucronata'' * ''Rhizophora stylosa'' {{Short pages monitor