The National Park the Roques, this located to about 150 km To the frank north Of the Central Coast of the state Vargas of Venezuela. This geographic situation of the Archipelago, together with their environmental conditions makes of this site the community climax but important of his type in the Caribbean, where hundreds of species of Fish, chorales, crustaceans and sponges coexist in this perfect natural laboratory, isolated of mainland and with a minimum environmental impact it is between the coralline but important communities and more good conserved of America and the Western Hemishpere .

The Archipelago the Roques, this conformed by about 42 small barren islands and 200 keys and banks of sand that include a surface of but of 221,000 Hectares and separated of the neighboring islands and the continental coast by depths superior to the 1000 m.s, bathed by warm oceanic waters (25º-30º C) all the year and under the tradewinds influence that blows of the E or of the E-NE

The National Park the Roques was the first Marine Park decreed in the Caribbean (August of 1972) and more important the coralline insular formation of the Caribbean (and of the Western Hemishpere)

This important reservations genetic of biological diversity meet the following characteristics: Environmental stability that favors the Biodiversity, Pick up, production and export of threatened youthful larvae and of species (choral, Marine Botuto, Lobster, Turtles, sharks, etc.), the archipelago reports but of 90% of the species of choral presents in the Caribbean in a state of "single comparable health" with Bonaire, bases Exist to think that the archipelago can be an important source of larvae of chorale for the rest of the Caribbean

The wealth of species in waters of the archipelago is impressive. Their coralline reefs have biological, ecological, fisiográfico and scenic a value incomparable; the marine fauna and other forms of oceanic life that they lodge constitute the richer and important natural resource, infinitely more than the resources of the ground.

The coralline, ambient reefs are exceptionally varied in habitat where small spaces of rompientes and calm waters are generated and zones of lights and total shades of nutrients. Some species of fish, like navajones or fish surgeons, cachamas, isabelitas or fish angel and butterfly, have special adaptations to the life of the reef; the showy lábridos fish clean other fish; the fish dark-brown scrape with their jaws the polyps of the calcárea surface of the chorales. Of great commercial value they are the pargos, rabirrubias, carites and mere; and greater value still has the thorny lobster, since more from 90% of the national production it comes from the Roques.

Another submarine ecosystem is constituted by the marine prairies of fanerógamas: unlike the seaweed, they are plants with flowers that, as the terrestrial grass takes place by means of flowers and fruits. They are in superficial waters illuminated by the sun, in depths that go of the 0.5 to the 6 or more meters, depending on the transparency of waters. They form dark zones in waters of little depth behind coralline barriers; or they are located in the zones of mangroves, where they form the ideal substratum for the establishment of these plants. The most common species are the grass of turtle, the favorite food of the green turtles, the dark-brown fish and the surgeons; and the manatí grass, whose leaves are resembled espagueti.

Hundreds of fish are in the prairies of fanerógamas the perfect, total labyrinth of nutrients, to lay eggs, to live their youthful stage and to hide of their enemies. Also they serve from refuge to stars and cucumbers of sea, worms and mollusk like very persecuted botuto, one of the greater snails of the Caribbean, of pink shell and meat very appreciated. Botuto has been commercialized in great scale like typical plate of some islands of the Caribbean. In addition, one has attributed popularly afrodisíacas faculties to him and its shell widely has been used in religious ceremonies, as homemade utensil and article of memory. In the Roques, the populations of botuto saw frankly diminished, for that reason its capture temporarily has been prohibited.