Andros, Bahamas

Andros Island is an archipelago within the Bahamas, the largest of the 26 inhabited Bahamian Islands. Geo-politically considered a single island, Andros 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 swamp lands, together with three major islands—North Andros, Mangrove Cay, and South Andros. The three main islands are separated by "bights", estuaries which trifurcate the island, connecting the island's east and west coasts. It is 104 miles (167 km) long by at its widest 40 miles (64 km) wide. Noteworthy for a unique combination of marine features and ecosystems, Andros rests on the west side of the 6000 foot (3+ km) deep Tongue of the Ocean. The Andros Barrier Reef[1] is the world's third longest after Australia's Great Barrier Reef and the Central American Belize Barrier Reef, runs for 142 miles (225 km) averaging a distance of only 1–2 miles from the Andros shore.[2] The extensive flats of the Great Bahama Bank lie to the west, northwest and south of Andros. The island is home to the world's largest collection of Blue Holes.[3] Geographically, North Andros is the sixth largest island in the West Indies, at roughly 6,000 km2 (2,300 sq mi) in area and 167 km (104 mi) long and 64 km (40 mi) wide at its widest point, and the 153rd largest island on Earth.[4] If all three main islands are included, Andros is the fifth largest island in the Indies, after Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica and Puerto Rico. Although comparable in area to the state of Rhode Island (3140 km2, population 1.05 million) and Long Island, N.Y. (3600 km2, population 7.5 million) Andros is home to a population of approximately 8000, almost all of whom are settled in a thin strip near the Queen Elizabeth Highway running along the island's eastern coast. Outside Alaska, the Amazon Basin and northern Canada, it is one of the least densely populated places in the Western Hemisphere. Thirty miles westward across the Tongue of the Ocean from the Bahamas’ national capital of Nassau on New Providence Island, Andros’ northern tip lies 138 miles/233 km from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.[5] Geologically and geographically the Bahamas, including Andros, are not located in the Caribbean, whose northern boundary is the Windward Passage, but rather in the Atlantic Ocean. However, politically the nation was historically part of the British West Indies and is considered culturally to be part of the Caribbean. The Bahamian dialect of the English language is distinctively Caribbean in character, similar to those of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, also formerly part of the British West Indies. The township of Fresh Creek is home to the Atlantic Undersea Testing and Evaluation Center AUTEC, operated by the U.S. Navy, where the United Kingdom and the United States conduct special operations training and sonar and submarine research in the Tongue of the Ocean. The U.S. Coast Guard also runs rescue and drug interdiction operations from AUTEC.[6] Andros is known in the Bahamas by two nicknames, "The Sleeping Giant" and "The Big Yard."