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Ogasawara NP, Tokyo
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“Cabbage Beach” likely takes its name from endemic Noyashi palms that once grew thick in the valley behind it—not from a cabbage-shaped reef. Their edible young shoots were heavily harvested during wartime, and the palms became scarce.
The 26.9-hectare marine district off Cabbage Beach and Mansaku Coast was designated on November 12, 2009—before Ogasawara’s 2011 World Heritage listing. Its protection recognizes both the coral communities and habitat for rare marine life.
Underwater-photo surveys around Anijima and Chichijima recorded 321 fish species; 8 were first records for the Ogasawara Islands. They weren’t new species—researchers had simply never documented them here before.
In 2017, monitoring divers estimated that live coral covered 60% of the seabed at Cabbage Beach. At another Anijima site, Mizutama Bay West, it reached 70%—strikingly dense patches in an island chain where steep drop-offs limit reef growth.
Monitoring finds the Anijima Strait tends to be the coolest measured water around Chichijima, while inner Futami Bay and the west coast run warmer. Even within this small island group, the sea has its own temperature patterns.
The Anijima Strait sites were only lightly affected by the 2009 coral-bleaching event, but a different mystery followed: from 2011, an area of Ryumon coral at Takino-ura suffered unexplained die-off, falling to about one-fifth of its healthy cover.
