Coastal Area 15803 Adjacent waters of Sone tidal flats

Basic Information References

Reason(s) for selection Criteria

Characteristics References

These are the waters in the vicinity of the Sone tidal mud flats in the city of Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture. The Sone tidal mud flats are well known as a site visited by snipe, plover, and other migratory birds, with large numbers of species and populations visiting during the spring and fall migrations and wintering there. At least 1% of the minimum estimated population of Kentish plover and Numenius phaeopus and at least 0.25% of the minimum estimated population of black-bellied plover, bar-tailed godwit, Eurasian curlew, grey-tailed tattler, and dunlin have been recorded here. Also visiting are greater scaup, common shellduck, Eurasian curlew, and others. Saunders' gull visits here too (BirdLife International, 2012). They also include Japanese horseshoe crab spawning grounds, and rare species such as Chaetopterus variopedatus, Mesochaetopterus japonicus, Uca lactea lactea and others (Ministry of the Environment, 2001).