File:Indonesia and the Flores Sea (MODIS 2018-05-04).jpg

English: On May 1 2018, NASA’s Terra satellite flew over Indonesia, allowing the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board to acquire a true-color image of the Flores Sea and the Lesser Sunda Islands.

The bright blue waters of the Flores Sea stretch more than 93,000 square miles (240,000 square kilometers) from the Lesser Sunda Islands in the south to the island of Celebes in the north. The basin is complex, containing a broad underwater plateau in the west, submarine mounts capped by coral atolls, ridges and troughs, and – just north of the some of the Lesser Sunda Islands – a deep trough that drops 16,860 feet (5,140 meters).

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) notes that the combined waters of the Flores Sea and, to it’s east, the Banda Sea, is considered part of the most complex and biodiverse marine environment in the world, hosting more than 2,000 marine fish species and over 80 genera of corals. They also note that the Lesser Sunda Islands form a series of bio-geographic stepping stones which connect the Australian fauna of Easter Indonesia and Papua New Guinea with the Eurasian fauna of Sumatra and the Southeast Asian Mainland.