Tabarca in terms of marine ecology. Therefore, waters around Tabarca were declared a Marine reserve in 1986, the first of its kind in Spain. This status was mainly granted due to its submarine posidonia prairie, which is the largest in the Spanish Mediterranean and has an extraordinary ecological value in terms of marine fauna and flora. In order to both enhance the marine biodiversity and protect it from fishing, an artificial reef was laid near the island by the Marine Reserve authorities. Tabarca Tabarca (, ) also known in Valencian as "Nova Tabarca" and "Illa Plana", and in Spanish as "Nueva
La Gomera the subsequent immigration, genetic footprints of the first settlers of the Canary Islands persist in the current inhabitants. Parallelling mtDNA findings (50.1% of U6 and 10.83% of L haplogroups), the largest average Northwest African contribution (42.50%) was found for the samples from La Gomera. According to Flores et al. (2003), genetic drift could be responsible for the contrasting difference in Northwest African ancestry detected with maternal (51% of Northwest African lineages) and paternal markers (0.3–10% of Northwest African lineages) in La Gomera. Alternatively, it could reflect the dramatic way the island was conquered, producing the strongest sexual asymmetry in the