Bahamas

The Bahamas is an archipelago of some seven hundred islands and more than two thousand cays sitting on two gigantic limestone banks, with shallow water of exceptional clarity. Andros, the largest island, is fringed by the third longest barrier reef in the world and riddled with hundreds of blue holes, flooded vertical cavities formed when sea level was lower and which hold fauna adapted to darkness and to the absence of oxygen. The sandy bottoms and seagrass meadows sustain turtles, rays and sharks, and the islands' mangroves act as fish nurseries. In the south, the island of Great Inagua holds extensive salt pans ringed by shallow lagoons.