Alacranes Reef, 62 miles (100 km) north of Progreso, has been a natural reserve since 1994 and is comprised of five islands: Desterrada, Chica (also called Cornezuelos o Blanca), Desertora (also called isla Muertos, Oeste o Desaparecida), Perez and Pajaros (also called Larga).

The Alacranes Reef is a group of small islands of coral origin located in the Gulf of Mexico at a distance of 130 km from the coast of the Mexican town of Progreso, Yucatan. Reef National Park was decreed by President Carlos Salinas de Gortari on 6 June 1994. The Alacranes Reef is a very important protected natural area in Mexico. Forms the Gulf of Mexico's largest coral structure as well as the only known and described in the state of Yucatan reef is why the June 6, 1994 is enacted under the category of National Park, allowing management directed, on the one hand to the conservation of the natural resource, but also it offers opportunities for education, leisure and recreation for visitors.

The October 27, 2006 was added to the World Network of Biosphere Reserves of the Humanity and Biosphere UNESCO program for over thirty years promotes sustainable development of terrestrial and marine ecosystems on a scientific basis that allows promote harmonious integration of people and nature. The Alacranes Reef was inscribed as a contracting party to the Ramsar Convention, on 02 February 2008. The Convention is an intergovernmental treaty signed in the city of Ramsar, Iran, in 1971, entering into force from 1975 and seeks preserve wetlands which are important globally based on different criteria.

Alacranes have a long history of human activity dating back to early colonial times. The early history of Alacranes are mapping and extend the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. For a long time was the benchmark for coastal shipping, appearing, to be dangerous, in mapping from the sixteenth century. Access to this site is only by sea.

The only inhabited island permanently in Perez Island, where it is established a lighthouse which is believed to have been donated by Queen Victoria of England in 1900, when in fact its construction began on the orders of the Ministry of Communications in June 1899, this confusion is due to the brand manufacturing lighthouse Chance Brothers & Co. LTD Birmingham. Currently the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (CONANP) is in charge of the administration of this area and has a field station, as well as the Secretariat of Mexican Navy maintains a small detachment of 14 sailors, which are changed monthly, together with staff harbormaster (SCT) consisting of two lighthouse keepers. There are also visits researchers arriving in the oceanographic vessel Justo Sierra of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

What characterizes the distribution and abundance of reef fish. In 2007 they begin the negotiations with the appropriate authorities for the park to be declared as World Heritage by the United Nations (UN). According to the Director of the organization René Kantún Palma, Arrecife Alacranes is the Gulf of Mexico's largest coral structure. In the reef half they have registered 34 species of corals which the entozoarios, scleractinian corals and horns deer and elk are under special protection.

In the white sandy islands Alacranes reef have been recorded to date 116 species of birds between residents and occasional migration. Of these, four are considered endangered species subject to special protection four and two endangered. Of threatened you have to shinned hawk (Accipiter striatus), peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) and Whistling plover shorebird (Piping Plovers).