Egg Island (The Bahamas)

About

Egg Island is an uninhabited island, officially an islet, comprising 800 m2 (8, 611 sq ft) in the Bahamas. It is thought to be named because of the supposed chickens owned by residents of other nearby islands who travel here to collect the eggs; however, there are no chickens on Egg Island. Another theory is that local sea bird eggs were often collected here by the first settlers, these were then wiped out by the introduction of goats to the island a long time ago. The island has a crescent shaped beach that is protected by a reef that protects the entire beach. The water behind the reef is generally less than 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) deep making it a good place to swim or watch the sea life. Since the water is so shallow and well protected, it tends to be warmer than the surrounding sea. The Egg Island Lighthouse was built in 1891. Egg Island gained some fame in the 1980s when Arne Molander claimed that this was the first island where Columbus landed in his 1492 voyage to the New World. Off the island is the wreck of the Arimoroa. Recently, Egg Island has gained international recognition after Disney Cruise Line started exploring the area for possible development of a cruise ship port. This project would have entailed dredging the sea bed to make way for a cruise ship port, drilling into and destroying coral reefs. Residents of nearby Spanish Wells and north Eleuthera were extremel

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