Biscayne National Park — Miami, Florida

Biscayne National Park lies immediately south of the City of Miami in Miami-Dade County, Florida, occupying 172,971 acres of coastal and marine terrain along the Atlantic side of the Florida peninsula. The U.S. National Park Service notes that roughly 95 percent of the park is underwater, making it among the most aquatically dominated units in the entire national park system. The park protects four distinct ecosystems — a mangrove shoreline, the shallow waters of Biscayne Bay, coral limestone keys, and the offshore Florida Reef — within a continuous corridor stretching from the southern edge of the Miami metropolitan area toward the upper Florida Keys.

The NPS Geodiversity Atlas identifies Biscayne as the site of the longest mangrove forest stretch along Florida's east coast and the northernmost reach of the Florida Reef, which forms part of the world's third-longest barrier reef ecosystem. The National Parks Conservation Association further describes this reef as the only living coral barrier reef in the continental United States. The NPS documents that the park's cultural history spans approximately 10,000 years, encompassing Native American occupation, Spanish and English maritime exploration, smuggling, and agricultural periods.

The Florida National Parks Association describes Biscayne's four distinct ecosystems as an interlocked sequence moving seaward from the mainland: the mangrove shoreline, Biscayne Bay, the coral limestone keys, and the offshore Florida Reef.

The mangrove shoreline forms the park's western edge along the mainland coast. The NPS Geodiversity Atlas documents that this strip constitutes the longest contiguous mangrove forest on Florida's Atlantic coast, providing critical nursery habitat and storm buffering for the coastal zone. Moving east, the shallow waters of Biscayne Bay — underlain by Pleistocene Miami Limestone — support seagrass beds and serve as feeding and breeding grounds for a wide range of marine species.

The coral limestone keys rise from the bay's eastern edge, their geology rooted in Key Largo Limestone, a carbonate formation that the NPS Geodiversity Atlas identifies as the underlying rock of both the park's islands and the broader Florida Keys chain. Elliott Key, the park's largest island, is described by the Florida National Parks Association as the first of the true Florida Keys — an island formed directly from fossilized coral reef rather than sediment accumulation.

The fourth and outermost ecosystem is the offshore Florida Reef, which the NPS identifies as the northernmost region of this reef system. The reef supports the only living coral barrier reef in the continental United States, according to the National Parks Conservation Association, and is accessible to divers and snorkelers. The park also encompasses a documented collection of historic shipwrecks accessible to divers.

The park encompasses more than 40 keys, the largest of which is Elliott Key. The Dante Fascell Visitor Center, located at Convoy Point on the mainland, serves as the primary public access hub; the NPS documents that guided eco-adventures depart from this location. Because no road connects the mainland to any of the park's keys, vessel access — whether private or guided — is the only means of reaching the offshore portions of the park.

Among the park's most recognized structures is the Boca Chita Lighthouse on Boca Chita Key. National Geographic documents the lighthouse as having been built in 1938, standing 65 feet tall, and accessible only by boat. National Geographic further notes that the structure offers what it describes as the park's best vantage of the Miami skyline — a perspective defined by the combination of open water and the city's high-rise profile to the north.

The NPS identifies boating, snorkeling, kayaking, camping, and wildlife observation as the primary documented recreational uses of the park. The Dante Fascell Visitor Center is the starting point for the concession-operated tours that provide access to the reef and to the outer keys for visitors without private watercraft.

In March 2024, the NPS announced that Biscayne National Park would receive $1,118,881 through the Inflation Reduction Act for coral reef protection and restoration, as documented in an NPS news release dated March 5, 2024. The designated activities include coral disease intervention, coral population enhancement, mooring buoy maintenance, restoration of storm-damaged corals, removal of marine debris, and management of invasive species. The NPS release noted that live coral cover in the park had declined by up to 90 percent over the preceding 30 years.

Also in April 2024, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras issued a ruling — in litigation brought by the National Parks Conservation Association — finding that the NPS had violated federal law by failing to establish a Marine Reserve Zone within Biscayne National Park. The court ordered the agency to publish a proposed regulation for such a zone. The National Parks Traveler reported that live coral cover had fallen from approximately 28 percent roughly three decades earlier to an estimated 5–8 percent at the time of the ruling.

A February 2026 investigative series by National Parks Traveler reported that 12 reef species within the park have been overfished to the point of being ecologically unsustainable, and that the rate of fisheries decline within Biscayne is more severe than in the broader Florida Keys ecosystem. As of May 2026, the status of the Marine Reserve Zone regulatory process ordered by Judge Contreras in April 2024 remained a subject of ongoing reporting by the National Parks Traveler.

The area now encompassed by Biscayne National Park has a documented human history extending approximately 10,000 years, according to the NPS. The Tequesta people inhabited the coastal region prior to European contact, and the bay subsequently became a setting for Spanish and English exploration, maritime smuggling, and agricultural activity through the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Formal federal protection of the area began in 1968, when Congress established Biscayne National Monument, as documented in the NPS Park Archives. Congress enlarged the monument and redesignated it as Biscayne National Park in 1980, at which point the park reached its current size of 172,971 acres. This congressional action brought the park's coral reefs, bay waters, mangrove coast, and keys under the full protective framework of the National Park Service.

The park's geological substrate connects it directly to the broader South Florida landscape. The NPS Geodiversity Atlas identifies Key Largo Limestone and Miami Limestone — both Pleistocene carbonate formations — as the rock underlying the park's islands, bay floor, and the adjacent mainland. These same formations extend south through the Florida Keys, establishing a continuous geological lineage between the park and the rest of the Keys chain.

Biscayne National Park occupies the geographic corridor between the City of Miami to the north and Everglades National Park to the south and west. The NPS Park Archives place the distance between Biscayne and Everglades National Park at approximately 21 miles, positioning Biscayne as the Atlantic-facing complement to the Everglades' freshwater and estuarine systems. Together, these two parks form the southern anchor of South Florida's federally protected natural lands.

Biscayne Bay, which constitutes the park's central water body, forms the eastern boundary of the Miami metropolitan area and the western boundary of the park. The bay's ecology connects directly to the health of the offshore Florida Reef: freshwater inflow, nutrient levels from urban and agricultural runoff, and water temperatures in the bay all affect reef conditions further seaward. The NPS Geodiversity Atlas situates Biscayne within the South Florida ecosystem as a unit whose condition is inseparable from the broader watershed that includes the Everglades and the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, which begins where the park's reef system extends southward.

The park's northern mainland entry at Convoy Point, where the Dante Fascell Visitor Center is located, sits within unincorporated Miami-Dade County, administered under the county government led — as of the 2024–2025 period — by County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, as identified in Miami-Dade economic announcements. Federal jurisdiction over the park itself rests with the NPS, while state and county agencies retain jurisdiction over adjacent waters and coastal management decisions that affect the park's broader ecological context.