Andros Island looks like a huge flat green ink spot with a halo of pulsing bright turquoise water around it. It is the largest Bahamian island. A low sandstone plateau with sable beaches, green casuarina trees and it is definitely pockmarked with blue lakes. Hundreds of islets surround it, making navigation for the adventurous yachter a mistake.
One’s attention is quickly drawn from Andros to a deep blue streak of sea, which looks like some huge blue scar in the aquamarine waters. Only a few miles from the east coast of Andros, there exists
the world’s greatest geologic oddity: the Tongue of the Ocean. This underwater canyon is set apart from the aquamarine hues around Andros by its deep and bottomless blue. It is about 1 miles deep but varies in width until it ends in a circular bulb.
More modern vestiges of man mark his passing over these waters. This wreck, I believe, is the Panther. It is near Nassau in deep enough water to enjoy a mantel of
Strange geography, outback locality, nearby to exotic locales and amidst modern travel. Mix this with the legends, facts, and hearsay of the many missing, and the mythos of the Triangle is no greater than right here.
It was along this route, at night and traveling in the opposite direction that some 30 years ago pilot Chuck Wakely, flying a plane for Sunline Aviation, claimed his plane started to glow iridescent green, his compass spin and his controls become sluggish and
Let’s continue with the Exumas
unresponsive. Wakely survived. Nearing Bimini it faded away and his plane returned to normal, though off course.
In the daytime, such a story seems fabulous. But at night it would be easy to imagine mysterious phenomena over the dark moonlit ocean and deserted shores, with only the distant twinkle of little Morgan’s Bluff.
guarded this strategic British colonial city, but now its iron cannon stand few and far between. Forts and cannons are not unusual on land and cannons are certainly seen by divers on the surrounding banks.
shallow waters, not one of the many missing in the Bermuda Triangle has been photographed and publicized.
It is something one ponders more when heading south along the Exuma islands. Nassau banishes the notion of mystery, but these
Fort Pincastle
Patches of the famous “glowing waters” of the Bahamas may come into view. They were the last lights visible on the Earth to the astronauts of Apollo 12. They may be a number of things: marl stirred up by fish or an indication of stresses in the bedrock,
From a distance there isn’t much that indicates civilization. At the tip of her northeast shore is the settlement of Morgan’s Bluff. Despite being the biggest island, it is not the most populated. If we can liken the islands of the Bahamas to the continents, Andros would be Africa, huge, dark, still mysterious in some ways. There isn’t much in my opinion to attract one to this “bit of the moon” on Earth unless you are a fisherman or scientist. . .or secret US military project. That is not to denigrate Andros. The feeling of pending adventure that comes with stepping on an isolated lee shore is something I personally love; but for the general visitor it is not a vacation center. Most commercial flights bypass and head toward Nassau.
At this point the Berry Islands appear on one’s left. When the tide is out these deserted spits of land are surrounded by a sandy desert.
The greatest aura of the Tongue at this juncture and flight level is not that it is such deep water but that it starts so precipitously (a geologic sight essentially only found so often in the Bahamas) and that this depth is accentuated by the surrounding shallows which are so shallow the ripples on the sandy bottom often appear as vast sand dunes.
Another satellite photo (left) highlights the drop off. The Tongue truly looks like it should be on another world.
This strange outback feeling is quickly banished by the sight of New Providence Island and then modern Nassau, with its towering hotels, byways, harbor, marinas, airport and historic sights. Fort Pincastle
This lonely feeling of abandoned isolation is not gone with daylight. Long flat beaches mark the coast of Andros. The only sound is the sizzle of the wind. There is no mountain for reference. No towering palms to give one the feeling of paradise. Low lying scrub, raggedy casuarina trees extend for miles. They give one a soulful feeling. You feel exposed, cast off. You’re a colonist from a Bradbury space drama.
A stark white boat— a sports fisherman— cruises by offshore. The sea roars and booms. The breakers are not great. Shadows move about in the marled shallows. Turtles, sharks, barracudas. Danger is everywhere, yet there is peacefulness— the hallucinogen of a deserted coast.
Clouds are huge, billowed and indolent things. Fowl move about in the brush. Seagulls mew
There are many legends here on Andros. As the greatest most unexplored
landmass in the Bahamas that is natural. There are the legends of the little people, the Chicarnies, but there is a more plausible, though confused, legend of the Jenny Hanaver or the Bigfoot of the Deep. It is not unique to the Bahamas. Director of Photography Gabriel Figaroa, a name well-known from the days
Wells and others one night in the 1940s. Figaroa, a native of Brazil, became adamant when his story of a man-like amphibian that walks on its hind legs was not believed. It was supposed to live deep in the unexplored headwaters of the Amazon and could
golden Hollywood, was dining with Orson
come out of the water for a while. It had an ape-like face, to some extent, and claw-like webbed hands. None believed Figaroa, of course, among the Hollywood sophisticates. But one guest was quite taken by the story. His name was William Alland. He was one of Wells’ Mercury Players and had played the reporter in Wells’ classic Citizen Kane. He took Figaroa’s story to heart and when he became a producer in the 1950s he produced guess what?— Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Does such an amphibian exist? More than one witness in the Bahamas says it has a turtle’s back, long neck, and a monkey’s face. But none have seen it walk on land. . .yet.
But the geologic mysteries remain undeniable out in this lonely desert of turquoise. Blue holes are provocative. They were made when the Bahama Bank was indeed a huge island. Today they remain, a testimony to an ancient past. They are alluring and frightening. They are blue reminders that an abyssal hell is all around this shallow bank.
They create great whirlpools with the tides, so that somewhere these cylindrical vents come out along the Bahama Banks’ side somewhere, deep down along the sheer cliffs that create the drop off along the Tongue of the Ocean or the outer banks in the Florida Straits.
Technicolor blue but in enough light to be clearly photographed. However popular or commercial such
photos become, and no matter how many thousands of divers routinely snorkel or dive over these tropical,
islands form a chain, often with week uninhabited links, that call mystery to one’s attention. They are under an air highway; pilots use them to stay navigated; and yachters use some as half-way points. Shallow waters, exotic islands; a charming deception to the mystery of the Triangle.
for they have a large sulfur content. They vent up from the bottom and float on the surface not unlike wisps of clouds in the sky.
They remind us of how mysterious this shallow bank is, and thus they instill in us that feeling of isolation that comes with being far from the daily routine of our life.
Satellite composite of the Tongue of the Ocean and its odd bulb.
