The Bahamas, measured.

Share of Grand Bahama's forests damaged when Hurricane Dorian stalled over the island for two full days in 2019. Salt water pushed inland by the surge kills Caribbean pine outright, well past the reach of the wind.

Bahamas Forestry Unit

Bahama Warblers remaining in Grand Bahama's pine forest after Dorian. A bird that lived nowhere else on the island, gone in a single storm. The species holds on in Abaco's pine, in the same forest type, facing the same weather.

Bahamas National Trust

The Bahama Banks hold the largest seagrass meadow ever mapped. Roughly 40% of the world's known seagrass, storing up to a quarter of all the carbon that seagrass locks away anywhere. It was found by strapping cameras to tiger sharks and letting them swim the banks.

Nature Communications, 2022

Of its nearshore waters The Bahamas placed under protection by 2021. One of the most ambitious marine commitments in the Caribbean, and one that still needs wardens, boats, surveys and salaries behind it to mean anything on the water.

Caribbean Challenge Initiative

The Andros Barrier Reef runs almost the length of the island. It is the third-largest barrier reef on Earth, home to more than 160 species of fish and coral, and it drops away on its eastern edge into the Tongue of the Ocean, a trench more than a mile deep.

Bahamas National Trust

Fish and coral recorded on the Andros Barrier Reef, from the reef crest down into the Tongue of the Ocean. A nursery, a storm barrier and a livelihood for Bahamian divers and fishers, all in the same 190 miles of reef.

Bahamas National Trust