Halong Bay

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Halong Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and popular travel destination in Quang Ninh Province, Vietnam.
The name Ha Long means “descending dragon”. Administratively, the bay belongs to Hạ Long city, Cam Pha city, and is a part of Van Don District. The bay features thousands of limestone karsts and isles in various shapes and sizes. Ha Long Bay is a center of a larger zone which includes Bai Tu Long Bay to the northeast, and Cat Ba Island to the southwest. These larger zones share a similar geological, geographical, geomorphological, climate, and cultural characters.

Ha Long Bay has an area of around 1,553 km2 (600 sq mi), including 1,960–2,000 islets, most of which are limestone. The core of the bay has an area of 334 km2 (129 sq mi) with a high density of 775 islets. The limestone in this bay has gone through 500 million years of formation in different conditions and environments.

Climate

The climate of the bay is tropical, wet, sea islands, with two seasons: hot and moist summer, and dry and cold winter. The average temperature is from 15–25 °C (59–77 °F), and annual rainfall is between 2 and 2.2 metres (6.6 and 7.2 ft). Ha Long Bay has the typical diurnal tide system (tide amplitude ranges from 3.5–4 metres or 11–13 feet). The salinity is from 31 to 34.5MT in the dry season and lower in the rainy season.

Geology and geomorphology:

In 2000, UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee inscribed Ha Long Bay in the World Heritage List according to its outstanding examples representing major stages of the Earth’s history and its original limestone karstic geomorphologic features. Ha Long Bay and its adjacent areas consist of a part of the Sino-Vietnamese composite terrane having its development history from pre-Cambrian up to the present day. During Phanerozoic, terrigenous, volcanogenic and cherty-carbonate sediments containing in abundance graptolites, brachiopods, fishes, corals, foraminiferas, radiolarias, bivalves and flora, separated one from another by 10 stratigraphic gaps, but the boundary between Devonian and Carboniferous has been considered as continuous. The limestone karstic geomorphology of the bay was developed since Miocene, especially the cone-shaped hills (fengcong), or isolated high limestone karst towers (fenglin) with many remnants of old phreatic caves, old karstic foot caves, marine notch caves form magnificent limestone karst landforms as unique on the world. The Quaternary geology was developed through 5 cycles with the intercalation of marine and continental environments. The present Hạ Long Bay, in fact, appeared after the Middle Holocene maximum transgression, leaving ultimate zone of lateral undercutting in the limestone cliffs bearing many shells of oysters, having the 14C age as 2280 to >40,000 y. BP. Geological resources are abundant: anthracite, lignite, oil shale, petroleum, phosphate, limestone and cement additives, kaolin, silica sand, dolomite, quartzite of exogenous origin, and antimony, the mercury of hydrothermal origin. Besides, there still are surface water, groundwater and thermal mineral water on the shore of the Ha Long Bay – Bai Tu Long Bay and other environmental resources.

Awards and designations:

In 1962, the Vietnam Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism designated Ha Long Bay a ‘Renowned National Landscape Monument’.

Hạ Long Bay was first listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994, in recognition of its outstanding, universal aesthetic value. In 2000 the World Heritage Committee additionally recognized Ha Long Bay for its outstanding geological and geomorphological value, and its World Heritage Listing was updated.

In October 2011, World Monuments Fund included the bay on the 2012 World Monuments Watch, citing tourism pressures and associated development as threats to the site that must be addressed. The goal of Watch-listing is to promote strategies of responsible heritage-driven development for a sustainable future.

In 2012, the New 7 Wonders Foundation officially named Ha Long Bay as one of New Seven Natural Wonders of the world.

Ha Long Bay is also a member of the Club of the Most Beautiful Bays of the World.