Lombok Strait

The Lombok Strait connects the Java Sea and the Pacific Ocean with the Indian Ocean.
It is located in Indonesia between the islands of Bali and Lombok.

The Lombok Strait is 12 miles (20km) wide at its southern end between Lombok Island and Nusa Penida Island, which is located in the middle of the Strait.
The northern end is 25 miles (40km) wide.
It is 37 miles (60km) in length.
An ocean current known as the ‘Indonesian Throughflow’ brings water from the Pacific into the Indian Ocean.
As it is much deeper than the Straits of Malacca, vessels that are too large to pass through there go via the Lombok Strait.

In 1859 the English Naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace drew the Wallace Line to highlight the Biogeographical boundary between the ‘Oriental Realm’ of Southeast Asia and the Indian Subcontinent, and the ‘Australasian Realm’ encompassing Australia, New Guinea and parts of the Indonesian Archipelago.
He noticed that the Asiatic mammals and birds found to the west of the Line are quite different to the Asian and Australian mammals and birds found to the east of the Line, despite the gap between the two being only 12 miles (20km) wide at the Lombok Strait.
This is due to the Lombok Strait and the Indo-Australian Archipelago being the current meeting point between four different tectonic plates that were once completely isolated geographically from one another, along with their Fauna.

Lombok Strait, Indonesia