Alice Shoal is a wholly submerged reef

Reef

In nautical terminology, a reef is a rock, sandbar, or other feature lying beneath the surface of the water ....

, located in the western Caribbean Sea

Caribbean Sea

The Caribbean Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean located in the tropics of the Western hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexico and Central America to the west and southwest, to the north by the Greater Antilles, and to the east by the Lesser Antilles....

, about 260 kilometres southwest of Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

. The mainland of Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

 lies 740 km away to the southeast.

Alice Shoal is situated 31 km northeast of East Cay of Serranilla Bank

Serranilla Bank

Serranilla Bank is a partially submerged reef, with small uninhabited islets, in the western Caribbean Sea. It is situated about northeast of Punta Gorda, Nicaragua, and roughly southwest of Jamaica. The closest neighbouring land feature is Bajo Nuevo Bank, located 110 km to the east.Serranilla...

, and 48 km west of Bajo Nuevo Bank

Bajo Nuevo Bank

Bajo Nuevo Bank, also known as the Petrel Islands , is a small, uninhabited reef with some small islets, covered with grass, located in the western Caribbean Sea at , with a lighthouse on Low Cay at . The closest neighbouring land feature is Serranilla Bank, located to the west.The reef was first...

, at 16°05′N 79°22′W. The bank is about 16 km in diameter as defined by the 200 m isobath, which correspondents to an area of more than 200 km². There are no islets, cay

Cay

A cay , also spelled caye or key, is a small, low-elevation, sandy island formed on the surface of coral reefs. Cays occur in tropical environments throughout the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans , where they provide habitable and agricultural land for hundreds of thousands of people...

s or above-water rocks. The bank has a minimum depth of 11 metres, with coral

Coral

Corals are marine animals in class Anthozoa of phylum Cnidaria typically living in compact colonies of many identical individual "polyps". The group includes the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and secrete calcium carbonate to form a hard skeleton.A coral "head" is a colony of...

 bottom, at its eastern edge. Depths over the greater part of the bank are less than 36 m. The bottom is fine white sand. Rips mark the edges of the bank.

The reef falls within the Joint Regime zone of Colombia and Jamaica, a maritime delimitation

Exclusive Economic Zone

Under the law of the sea, an exclusive economic zone is a seazone over which a state has special rights over the exploration and use of marine resources, including production of energy from water and wind. It stretches from the seaward edge of the state's territorial sea out to 200 nautical...

zone which allows for co-operative control and exploitation of resources between the two states.

External links

• Oceandots — satellite images.