The park's vast expanses of mudflats provide a home for over one million migrant shorebirds from northern Europe, Siberia and Greenland.

[3] The park has been designated an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports large numbers of wintering waterbirds.

[4] The extensive intertidal flats of Parc National du Banc d’Arguin shelters on the most pristine seagrass beds on earth.

The peninsula is administratively divided between Morocco (see Glossary) and Mauritania, with the Mauritanian port and railhead of Nouadhibou located on the eastern shore (see fig.

Prevailing oceanic trade winds from the Canary Islands modify the influence of the harmattan, producing a humid but temperate climate.

Vast areas of the Banc d'Arguin are covered by mixed carbonate–siliciclastic sediments dominated by barnacles and mollusc remains plus admixed aeolian siliciclastics.

Assemblages formed by benthic foraminifers and molluscs and monospecific bivalve shell accumulations with admixed aeolian silt characterize the platform cover in the outer shelf.

[14] In the central and southern outermost shelf, silt-sized quartzose materials form confined bodies referred to as the Arguin and Timiris Mud Wedges.

Locally, the mud wedge deposits are incised by gullies and canyons towards the shelf break lying at around 80–110 m. The southernmost Golfe d'Arguin describes a homoclinal ramp profile with vast intertidal plains around Tidra Island.

[15] Because of its rich fishery and strategic location, the territory has been highly coveted and disputed by the European colonial powers of Portugal, France, England, Brandenberg/Prussia and Holland.

Lured by legends of vast wealth in interior kingdoms, the Portuguese established a trading fort at Arguin, southeast of Cap Blanc (present-day Ras Nouadhibou), in 1455.

The king of Portugal also maintained a commercial agent at Ouadane in the Adrar in an attempt to divert gold traveling north by caravan.

In the mid-fifteenth century, as many as 1,000 slaves per year were exported from Arguin to Europe and to the Portuguese sugar plantations on the island of São Tomé in the Gulf of Guinea.

Produced by the acacia trees of Trarza and Brakna and used in textile pattern printing, this gum arabic was considered superior to that previously obtained in Arabia.