Desecheo Island, Protected island in Mona Passage, Puerto Rico
Desecheo Island is a protected island in the Mona Passage off Puerto Rico, covering roughly 360 acres with steep cliffs, thorny shrubs, and cacti visible across its landscape. The terrain rises about 715 feet above the ocean.
A Spanish explorer named the island in 1517 during early Caribbean voyages of discovery. The United States military later transformed it into a bombing range during World War II and used it for Air Force survival training through the mid-1960s.
The Spanish explorer Nuñez Alvarez de Aragón documented and named the island in 1517 during early Caribbean exploration missions.
The island remains off-limits to visitors due to unexploded ordnance hazards scattered across the terrain that pose serious safety risks. You can observe it from offshore waters or explore the surrounding underwater environment instead.
The waters surrounding the island contain extensive coral reefs that draw various marine species and sustain a complex underwater world. These coral landscapes make the offshore waters remarkably diverse despite the island's inaccessibility to human visitors.
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