Andros Island (Bahamas)

Andros is an archipelago in The Bahamas. Politically considered a single island, Andros in total has an area greater than all the other 700 Bahamian islands combined. The land area of Andros consists of hundreds of small islets and cays connected by mangrove estuaries and tidal swamplands, together with three major islands: North Andros, Mangrove Cay, and South Andros. The three main islands are separated by bights, estuaries that divide the island from east to west. Andros is 167 kilometres (104 mi) long by 64 km (40 mi) wide at the widest point. It is about 50 kilometres (31 mi) west of the capital city Nassau in New Providence, separated by the deep channel known as the Tongue of the Ocean. As of 2022, Andros has a population of approximately 8,000 people. The Andros Barrier Reef, the sixth-longest coral reef in the world, runs along the eastern side of the island for about 225 km (140 mi), averaging a distance of 2–3 km (1–2 mi) from the shore. The island has the world's largest collection of blue holes, water-filled entrances to underwater cave systems. The Great Bahama Bank is off of the island's west coast. The Lucayan people were the indigenous inhabitants of Andros. In the early 1500s, Spanish colonizers enslaved the Lucayans and moved them to other islands, leaving Andros mostly uninhabited for about 130 years. After a long British colonial era, which started around the mid-1600s, the Bahamas became an independent country in 1973. The population of Andros has included Loyalists who left the United States after the American Revolution and brought their slaves with them, Black Seminoles and escaped slaves who fled Florida in the 1800s, Africans freed from slave ships, other settlers and immigrants, and descendants. Traditional culture in parts of Andros reflects West African and Seminole influence. Major employers on Andros include the Bahamian government, the U.S. Navy Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center, commercial fishing, and tourism. Tourism is the largest industry and includes scuba diving and recreational fishing, especially bonefishing.