59 articles
Abaco Islands
The Abaco Islands are a 120-mile chain in the northern Bahamas centered on Great Abaco (1,214 km2), known for Caribbean pine forests, loyalist settlement, the ground-nesting Bahama Parrot, and Hurricane Dorian's 2019 Category 5 landfall.
Andros
Andros is the largest island of the Bahamas (about 5,959 km²), an archipelago of North Andros, Mangrove Cay, and South Andros with under 10,000 people, the country's largest freshwater aquifer, over 180 blue holes, and the world's third largest barrier reef.
Anegada
Anegada, also called the flat coral and limestone island of the British Virgin Islands, is the territory's second largest island at 38 km2, lying 24 km north of Virgin Gorda behind Horseshoe Reef, with Ramsar wetlands and the Critically Endangered Anegada rock iguana.
Antigua
Antigua: largest island of Antigua and Barbuda in the eastern Caribbean, 280 sq km, volcanic-to-limestone geology, Ciboney settlement from 3100 BC, British sugar colony, Nelson's Dockyard UNESCO site, tourism economy, hurricane and sea-level-rise exposure.
Bahama Islands
Bahama Islands: low-lying archipelago of 700+ limestone islands and cays southeast of Florida, also called the Lucayas, sitting on the Great and Little Bahama Banks carbonate platforms; highest point Mount Alvernia, 63 m, on Cat Island; independent Commonwealth country since 1973.
Bajo Nuevo Bank
Bajo Nuevo Bank (Petrel Islands, New Bank) is an uninhabited Caribbean coral bank, 9 by 26 km, with three cays including Low Cay. The ICJ awarded it to Colombia in 2012; the US claims it under the Guano Act of 1856.
Barbados
Barbados, easternmost Lesser Antilles island nation, capital Bridgetown, area 431 km2. British colony from 1627, independent 30 November 1966 under Errol Barrow, republic since 2021; tourism-driven economy, CARICOM member since 1973.
Barbuda
Barbuda: flat Caribbean island 25 miles north of Antigua, part of Antigua and Barbuda; 62 square miles, about 1,300 people. Codrington lease 1684–1870, communal land tenure, 2017 Hurricane Irma evacuation, Codrington Lagoon frigatebird sanctuary.
Basse-Terre
Basse-Terre, western volcanic half of Guadeloupe (848 km²), Lesser Antilles; home of the 1,467 m Soufrière, highest Lesser Antilles peak, built since ~2.8 Ma by southward-migrating volcanism, with the town of Basse-Terre as Guadeloupe's capital.
Bonaire
Bonaire (Boneiru), a Caribbean special municipality of the Netherlands since 2010 in the Caribbean Netherlands, capital Kralendijk; Dutch- and Papiamentu-speaking, US-dollar island famed for its 1979 marine park, shore diving, and tourism-based economy.
Caribbean Netherlands
Caribbean Netherlands (Caribisch Nederland, BES islands): Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba, three special municipalities of the Netherlands since 10 October 2010, with island councils, US dollar currency, and contrasting steppe and monsoon climates.
Castaway Cay
Castaway Cay, formerly Gorda Cay, is a 1,000-acre private island in The Bahamas. Disney leases and operates it as an exclusive port of call for Disney Cruise Line passengers.
Cayman Brac
Cayman Brac: second-largest of the three Cayman Islands, 14 sq mi, 89 miles northeast of Grand Cayman, named for its Gaelic 'brac' (bluff), highest point of the territory at 42 m, a diving and caving island with the MV Captain Keith Tibbetts wreck.
Cozumel
Cozumel (Kùutsmil, Maya island) is an island and municipality in Quintana Roo, Mexico, in the Caribbean Sea off the Yucatán coast. It is the world's busiest cruise port of call, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since 2016, a Pueblo Mágico, and home to the San Gervasio Maya site and the rare Cozumel fox.
Culebra, Puerto Rico
Culebra (Isla Culebra) is an island municipality of Puerto Rico, 17 miles east of the main island, with about 1,735 residents, a 1909 national wildlife refuge, a former Navy training ground, and ferry and air links via Ceiba.
Curaçao
Curaçao (Kòrsou), southern Caribbean island and autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands since 2010; Dutch since 1634, slave-trade hub, oil refinery, tourism-led economy, UNESCO Willemstad, population 158,006 in 2026.
Dominica
Dominica (Commonwealth of Dominica), the Nature Isle of the Caribbean: a mountainous Eastern Caribbean island between Martinique and Guadeloupe, independent since 1978, with nine volcanoes, Morne Trois Pitons UNESCO park, and a tourism, agriculture, and citizenship-by-investment economy.
Dutch Caribbean
Dutch Caribbean: the six Caribbean islands of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten, Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, Saba), reorganized on 10 October 2010 when the Netherlands Antilles dissolved into three constituent countries and three Dutch special municipalities.
Eleuthera
Eleuthera, a 160-km-long thin Bahamian island 58 miles east of Nassau, settled in 1648 by the Eleutheran Adventurers, once a pineapple exporter, now a tourism destination with Harbour Island nearby.
Grand Bahama
Grand Bahama, northernmost Bahamian island on the Little Bahama Bank, home to Freeport, the country's second city and shipping hub; devastated by Hurricane Dorian in 2019, now rebounding on cruise tourism and multi-billion-dollar investment.
Grand Cayman
Grand Cayman is the largest of the three Cayman Islands, a British Overseas Territory in the western Caribbean, home to George Town, Seven Mile Beach, and an economy built on financial services and tourism.
Grand Turk Island
Grand Turk Island, Turks and Caicos: capital Cockburn Town since 1766, 18 km², 4,831 residents (2012). Historic Bermudian sea-salt island, John Glenn's 1962 landing site, and home of the Carnival-operated Grand Turk Cruise Center.
Grande-Terre
Grande-Terre is the eastern, flat limestone island of mainland Guadeloupe in the Lesser Antilles, separated from volcanic Basse-Terre by the Rivière Salée; about 590 km², sugar cane economy, main town Pointe-à-Pitre.
Greater Antilles
Greater Antilles: large West Indies island group (Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, usually Cayman and Virgin Islands), ~211,000 km², ~38 million people; old continental-fragment geology unlike the Lesser Antilles arc.
Hispaniola
Hispaniola (Quisqueya, La Isla Española): second-largest Greater Antilles island after Cuba, ~77,914 km², shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti along a 388 km border; highest relief in the West Indies at Pico Duarte.
Île de la Gonâve
Île de la Gonâve (La Gonâve), a 750-km² limestone island off Haiti in the Gulf of Gonâve, its largest satellite island: severe water scarcity (7 L/person/day), deforestation, chronic food insecurity, and a 2025 gang blockade.
Isla de Aves
Isla de Aves (Aves Island) is Venezuela's northernmost point, a 375 m coral-sand cay in the Caribbean over 500 km from Margarita, confirmed Venezuelan by the 1865 Spanish arbitral award, and a major green sea turtle and seabird refuge.
Isla Holbox
Isla Holbox is a 42-km car-free barrier island off northern Quintana Roo, Mexico, in the Yum Balam protected area, known for whale shark tours (May–September), flamingos, bioluminescence, lobster pizza, and fishing-to-tourism transition pressures.
Isla Mujeres
Isla Mujeres (Island of Women) is a Caribbean island in Quintana Roo, Mexico, 6 km northeast of Cancún, about 7 km long, a former Maya sanctuary of Ixchel, named for female statues found by Spanish conquistadors, and a Pueblo Mágico since 2015.
Lesser Antilles
The Lesser Antilles are an island arc in the Caribbean Sea, stretching from the Virgin Islands south to Grenada and formed by subduction of the Atlantic plate.