| Swatch of No Ground Marine Protected Area Bengali: সোয়াচ অফ নো গ্রাউন্ড মেরিন সংরক্ষিত এলাকা | |
| Map: | Bangladesh |
| Relief: | 1 |
| Coordinates: | 21.25°N 89.4667°W |
| Area: | 1738 sq km |
| Established: | 2014 |
Swatch of No Ground Marine Protected Area is a protected area of Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal. The reserve covers an area of 1636sqkm.[1]
It was established on 26 October 2014, making it the first Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the country. The area hosts important habitats for several endangered creatures such as various species of dolphins and whales.[2]
The Swatch of No Ground (SoNG) is a 14 km wide trench in the Bay of Bengal. It is located 30 km from Dublar Char Islands, located in the Sundarbans. This deepest trench has a record size of about 1340 meters (400–450 m deeper than the surrounding mean seafloor depth of 1000 m).[3] It has an average depth of about 1,200 meters underwater. This underwater trench is a part of the Bengal Fan, the largest underwater fan in the world.[4] [5] The fan in the Bay of Bengal, south of the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta, is also known as Ganga Fan.
The area has notable biodiversity of oceanic fauna such as cetaceans, sea turtles, fish, and sea birds. Among these, local populations of cetaceans have been the primal focus of past studies; core species include Bryde's whales, spinner dolphins, Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins, Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins, pantropical spotted dolphins, Irrawaddy dolphins, Indo-Pacific finless porpoises, and species with less-frequency include minke whales, rough-toothed dolphins and false killer whales.[6] Some of these species are genetically unique and endangered.[7]
There are a number of other notable species in the area, such as whale sharks, hammerhead sharks, tunas, groupers, hawksbill turtles, olive ridley turtles, masked boobies, great black-backed gulls, crested terns, swimming crabs, and so on.[8]
In the past, fishermen who lived nearby did not get any measurement by their native bamboo measurement system "Bam" (Bengali: বাম), and named it "Na Bam" (Bengali: না বাম, No Bam or, Bamless). It is one of the eleven largest valleys in the world. It is said that here in 1863, a 212 tonne gunboat named Gadfly sank in a storm while carrying a huge amount of treasure from India to the United Kingdom.[9]