93 Fun Facts About Caribbean Sea

Dust that hazes Caribbean skies each summer is blown across the Atlantic from which desert?

The Sahara sends plumes of dust across the Atlantic all summer; the dry air that carries them dims Caribbean skies and can keep hurricanes from forming.

Which Mexican resort city on the Caribbean was a nearly empty barrier island until planners chose it for tourism in 1970?

Cancún was a nearly deserted barrier island until 1970, when Mexican government planners, after a three-year study, picked it to be built from scratch as a resort city.

The Greater Antilles form the sea's northern boundary, running from Cuba east to which island?

Puerto Rico ends the Greater Antilles in the east. Spaniards first called the island San Juan and its harbour town Puerto Rico, 'rich port'; over the centuries the two names swapped.

The Caribbean Sea has been nicknamed the 'American' version of which sea that also lies between two continents?

The Mediterranean lends its name to the 'American Mediterranean', a label for the Caribbean and the waters joined to it, though the Caribbean alone, at about 2.75 million sq km, is the bigger sea.

Which Caribbean island holds the Pitch Lake, a vast natural lake of asphalt that Walter Raleigh used to caulk his ships?

Trinidad's Pitch Lake holds millions of tons of natural asphalt; Raleigh patched his ships with it in 1595, and since the 1800s it has been dug out to surface roads at home and abroad.

Which of Columbus's ships ran aground off a Caribbean island on Christmas Day 1492?

The Santa María ran aground on 25 December 1492; her timbers were hauled ashore to build a stockade that Columbus named La Navidad, 'Christmas', and he left 39 men there when he sailed home.

Which barrier reef, the largest in the Western Hemisphere, runs along Central America's Caribbean coast?

The Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, also called the Great Mayan Reef, stretches about 1,000 km from Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula to Honduras and is the largest barrier reef in the Western Hemisphere.

Roatán, a scuba-diving hotspot and the largest of the Bay Islands, belongs to which country?

Honduras was handed the Bay Islands by Britain in 1859 after seven years as a British colony; English-speaking islanders remained the majority there until the late 20th century.

Which strait between Cuba and Haiti lets Atlantic water into the Caribbean?

The Windward Passage, about 80 km wide between eastern Cuba and northwestern Haiti, is a main Atlantic entry to the Caribbean and lies on the Panama Canal to US east coast shipping route.

The Yucatán Channel links the Caribbean Sea with which body of water?

The Gulf of Mexico takes the Caribbean's outflow through the Yucatán Channel, 217 km wide between Mexico and Cuba; the water loops round the gulf, squeezes out past Florida and becomes the Gulf Stream.

The Mona Passage separates which two islands?

Hispaniola and Puerto Rico face each other across the Mona Passage; a 1918 earthquake beneath the strait sent a tsunami sweeping over the towns of Puerto Rico's west coast.

Which future American founding father was born on the Caribbean island of Nevis and grew up on St Croix?

Alexander Hamilton was a teenage clerk on St Croix when his vivid letter about a 1772 hurricane ran in the local paper; impressed islanders raised a fund that sent him to New York for an education.

The Carib people, namesake of the Caribbean, also gave English which word through Columbus's version of their name?

Cannibal comes from Caniba, Columbus's rendering of the Caribs' name; Europeans believed they ate human flesh, while Columbus at first took the name to mean they were subjects of the Great Khan.

Which Colombian archipelago in the western Caribbean lies far closer to Nicaragua than to Colombia?

San Andrés and its sister islands lie off Nicaragua, far from the Colombian mainland; Nicaragua took its claim to the International Court of Justice, which held in 2007 that a 1928 treaty had already made them Colombia's.

The Cayman Trough marks the Caribbean Plate's boundary with which other tectonic plate?

The North American and Caribbean plates grind past each other along the Cayman Trough, the sea's deepest point; farther east the same boundary zone produced the 2010 earthquake that wrecked Port-au-Prince.

Gustavia, capital of Saint-Barthélemy, is named for a king of which country that ruled the island for nearly a century?

Sweden got Saint-Barthélemy from France in 1784 in exchange for trading rights in Gothenburg and handed it back after a vote in 1877; the island's coat of arms still shows Sweden's three crowns.

Which Martinique volcano destroyed the city of Saint-Pierre in minutes in 1902?

Mount Pelée sent a cloud of scorching gas and ash through Saint-Pierre on 8 May 1902, killing nearly everyone in the city; a prisoner shielded by his thick-walled cell was among the few survivors.

Which spice appears on the national flag of Grenada, the Caribbean's 'Isle of Spice'?

Nutmeg, a native of Indonesia's Spice Islands, became one of Grenada's chief exports; when the country became independent in 1974, the nutmeg was the one emblem carried over from its earlier flag.

Which submarine volcano north of Grenada broke the sea surface in 1939?

Kick 'em Jenny was unknown until that eruption, which sent high waves onto Grenada's coast; it has erupted at least a dozen times since, and ships must keep 1.5 km clear of its summit.

Which Category 5 hurricane, the strongest ever to make landfall on Dominica, devastated the island in September 2017?

Maria intensified explosively on 18 September 2017, reaching Category 5 just before it hit Dominica that night; it wrecked most of the island's housing and stripped its forests bare.

Which steady air currents from the east carried sailing ships from Europe across the Atlantic to the Caribbean?

The trade winds have nothing to do with commerce: 'trade' once meant a path or track, and the winds were named for holding a steady course, which is what made them the sailing road to the Caribbean.

Which westward-flowing ocean current crosses the Atlantic from Africa and feeds the Caribbean Sea?

The North Equatorial Current, driven west by the prevailing winds, splits off South America: one branch flows into the Caribbean while the other, the Antilles Current, passes outside the islands.

Which warm current runs northwest along South America's coast to feed the Caribbean Current?

The Guiana Current carries South Atlantic water, freshened by the Amazon's outflow, northwest along the Guianas and into the Caribbean on its eastern side.

Which Caribbean islands are so dry that cactus scrub, not rainforest, is their main vegetation?

Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, the ABC islands off Venezuela, get so little rain that cactus scrub covers them, and Aruba makes most of its drinking water by desalinating the sea.

The Caribbean hurricane season runs during which months?

June to November is the official Atlantic hurricane season, dates chosen to take in over 97% of the basin's tropical storm activity; the storms need sea water of about 26.5 °C or more and peak in late August and September.

The words 'hurricane' and 'hammock' reached English, via Spanish, from the language of which Caribbean people?

The Taíno were the first people Columbus met in 1492, so their words for things new to Europeans, hurakán for the storm and hamaca for the hanging bed, passed into Spanish and on into English.

Which colourful Caribbean reef fish grinds up coral rock and excretes it as white sand?

Parrotfish scrape algae off dead coral with their beak-like teeth, grind up the rock and pass it as fine sand; one large fish can produce hundreds of pounds of it a year.

Coral bleaching happens when overheated corals expel which symbiotic organisms living in their tissues?

Zooxanthellae, single-celled algae living in coral tissue, supply most of the coral's food and its colour; when water warms, corals expel them and turn white.

The United States bought its Virgin Islands in 1917, for $25 million in gold, from which country?

Denmark sold St Thomas, St John and St Croix after Washington grew afraid that Germany might overrun Denmark and turn the islands into a submarine base for attacks on Caribbean shipping.

Which giant fish gathers by the hundred off Mexico's Caribbean coast to feed on drifting fish eggs?

Whale sharks, the largest fish alive, were long thought of as loners, yet in 2009 an aerial survey counted 420 in one patch of sea off Yucatán, all feeding on the eggs of spawning little tunny.

Captain Bligh's Bounty, seized by mutineers in 1789, was carrying which food plant from Tahiti to the Caribbean?

Breadfruit was wanted as cheap food for enslaved plantation workers; after the mutiny Bligh sailed again in 1791 with two ships and this time delivered the trees to St Vincent and Jamaica.

Which regional marine mammal, last seen in 1952, was declared extinct by the US in 2008?

The Caribbean monk seal, hunted for its oil and meat, was last seen at Serranilla Bank in 1952; the US government declared it extinct in 2008 after a five-year review.

The Caribbean's green turtle has an olive-brown shell, so its name comes from the green colour of what?

Its fat is green; the animals were once killed in huge numbers for that fat, their meat and their eggs, which sent the species into steep decline worldwide.

The hawksbill has long been hunted for a luxury material sold under what name?

Tortoiseshell is the hawksbill's mottled shell, carved into combs, jewellery and inlay; the trade nearly wiped the species out, and CITES now forbids selling it across borders.

Which aquarium fish from the Indo-Pacific has invaded the Caribbean since first being found off Florida in 1985?

Lionfish were most likely released by aquarium owners; a popular story blames Hurricane Andrew for smashing a seaside aquarium in 1992, but the first one was caught off Dania Beach seven years earlier.

Which large Caribbean sea snail, fished for its meat and pink shell, is now protected as a threatened species?

Queen conch takes about four years to mature and can live for 30, so decades of overfishing thinned it out; its trade is regulated under CITES and the United States lists it as threatened.

The three 'mermaids' Columbus reported in Caribbean waters in 1493 were almost certainly which animals?

Manatees, slow grazers that rise to the surface to breathe, were what Columbus saw in January 1493; he wrote in his journal that the mermaids were 'not half as beautiful as they are painted'.

The sargassum that has piled onto Caribbean beaches since 2011 is what kind of organism?

A brown alga, sargassum floats on small gas-filled bladders; since 2011 a belt of it has bloomed across the tropical Atlantic most summers, and the heaps rotting on shore give off hydrogen sulfide, the smell of bad eggs.

The Great Blue Hole, a giant marine sinkhole off Belize, lies near the centre of which atoll?

Lighthouse Reef rings the Great Blue Hole, which began as a dry limestone cave when ice ages dropped the sea by more than 100 metres; its stalactites were drowned when the water rose again.

Which small Caribbean island has been divided between two European countries since a treaty of 1648?

Saint Martin was split when the Dutch came back for its salt lakes in 1648 and found the French already there; rather than fight, the two signed a partition treaty, and the island is still shared today.

The United States has leased which bay on Cuba's southeastern coast for a naval base since 1903?

Guantánamo Bay has held a US naval base since a 1903 treaty, signed five years after US marines landed there in the Spanish-American War; Cuba's government has protested the American presence ever since its 1959 revolution.

The Gulf of Venezuela connects the Caribbean Sea to which oil-rich lake?

Maracaibo is Venezuela's main oil-producing area; a bar across the lake's mouth kept large ships out until dredging in the 1930s opened a channel to the sea.

Which country's company, led by the builder of the Suez Canal, tried and failed to dig the Panama Canal in the 1880s?

France's attempt, led by Ferdinand de Lesseps, began in 1881 and collapsed in 1889 after tropical diseases killed workers in their thousands and the money ran out; the United States took over and opened the canal in 1914.

Spaniards in Panama called the Caribbean the North Sea and which other body of water the South Sea?

The Pacific Ocean lay to the south for Balboa, who marched across Panama from its Caribbean shore in 1513, so he claimed it as the Mar del Sur; the sea behind him became the Mar del Norte.

Which hummingbird, found only in Cuba, is the smallest bird in the world?

The bee hummingbird weighs about two grams, and the female lays two eggs, each no bigger than a coffee bean, in a cup-shaped nest she builds from bark and spider webs.

Which pirate's ship was the forty-gun Queen Anne's Revenge?

Blackbeard, Edward Teach, captured the French slaver La Concorde in 1717 and renamed her Queen Anne's Revenge, mounting some forty guns before running her aground off North Carolina in 1718.

Rum, the region's famous drink, is first mentioned in records from which island around 1650?

A Barbados manuscript of about 1651 gives the first known mention, calling the drink 'Rumbullion alias Kill-Divill' and describing it as 'a hot, hellish, and terrible liquor'.

Which river, Colombia's main waterway, flows north through the Andes to reach the Caribbean Sea near Barranquilla?

The Magdalena has been Colombia's commercial artery since the Spanish conquest; shifting sandbars choke its mouth, which has to be dredged so that ocean-going ships can reach Barranquilla.

Which group of the Lesser Antilles lies in the south of the arc?

The Windward Islands, including Martinique, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and Grenada, form the southern Lesser Antilles; the Leeward Islands lie to the north and the Leeward Antilles run west along the Venezuelan coast.

Which Caribbean island, though smaller than Cuba, is home to more people than any other in the West Indies?

Hispaniola holds two countries because Spain, which claimed the whole island, recognised French control of its western end in 1697; that colony became Haiti, and the rest the Dominican Republic.

Which small Baltic duchy was among the European powers that colonised Caribbean islands after Spain?

Courland, a duchy in what is now Latvia, planted settlers on Tobago in the 1600s and tried the Gambia River in West Africa too; the colony failed, but Tobago's Great Courland Bay still carries the name.

Which walled Maya city stands on a cliff above the Caribbean Sea on Mexico's Yucatán coast?

Tulum was a busy Maya seaport that outlasted the collapse of the great inland cities; people were still living inside its walls when the Spanish reached Mexico in the 1500s.

Curaçao liqueur, often dyed bright blue, is flavoured with the dried peel of which fruit grown on Curaçao?

Bitter oranges called laraha descend from Seville oranges the Spanish planted on the island; the fruit grew too bitter to eat, but its dried peel turned out to be wonderfully aromatic.

Which Caribbean beach tree is so toxic that its Spanish name means 'little apple of death'?

Manchineel sap blisters skin on contact, so even sheltering under the tree in the rain can burn; Guinness World Records lists it as the world's most dangerous tree.

Which timber tree is the national tree of both Belize and the Dominican Republic?

Mahogany stands on Belize's flag between two woodcutters, because logging first drew British settlers to that coast; the Dominican Republic's national tree is the West Indian species.

Which people of mixed African and Carib descent were deported by the British from St Vincent to Roatán in 1797?

The Garifuna lost a war with Britain for St Vincent and were shipped away in 1797; from those few thousand exiles grew the Garifuna communities of Central America's Caribbean coast.

Vents found nearly 5,000 metres down in the Cayman Trough in 2010 were named by British scientists for which bathysphere pioneer?

William Beebe was lowered more than 900 metres into the sea off Bermuda in 1934 inside a steel ball on a cable, becoming the first biologist to watch deep-sea animals alive in their own world.

Which Jamaican town, the 'wickedest city in the world', largely sank in a 1692 earthquake?

Port Royal lost much of its ground to the sea within minutes on 7 June 1692; the survivors moved across the harbour and founded Kingston, which took over its commerce.

Which Spanish treasure galleon, sunk off Cartagena in 1708, was finally located in 2015?

The San José, blown up by a British squadron in 1708 with gold and silver aboard, was found about 600 metres down in 2015; Spain claims her as a warship, Colombia as national patrimony.

Which 2005 hurricane, weeks after Katrina, set the Atlantic record for low pressure, 882 mbar, over the Caribbean?

Wilma's central pressure fell 97 mbar in 24 hours to reach 882 on 19 October 2005, while its eye tightened to under four kilometres across, the smallest ever seen in an Atlantic hurricane.

After Hurricane Hattie flattened Belize City in 1961, the capital was moved to which inland site?

Belmopan, built about 80 km inland, became the capital in 1970 after Hattie's storm tide of up to 14 feet swept through sea-level Belize City; Jimmy Cliff's breakthrough single was named after the storm.

Which capital city was buried when Montserrat's Soufrière Hills volcano erupted from 1995?

Plymouth, Montserrat's capital, was abandoned in 1997 after pyroclastic flows from the Soufrière Hills volcano buried most of the town; about two-thirds of the island's population left, and Brades became the working capital.

RMS Rhone, a famous wreck dive, sank in an 1867 hurricane off Salt Island in which territory?

Salt Island lies in the British Virgin Islands; the Rhone was anchored off Peter Island instead of her usual St Thomas stop because of a yellow fever outbreak when the hurricane struck on 29 October 1867.

Grenada's bronze Christ of the Abyss thanks islanders for rescuing passengers of which ship?

The Bianca C, a 180-metre Italian liner, caught fire and sank off Grenada in October 1961; her owners, Costa Line, gave the statue in thanks, and the wreck's upper decks lie about 30 metres down off St George's.

Cubans call the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs landing by the name of which beach?

Playa Girón, the main landing beach, gives the battle its Cuban name; the CIA-trained exiles of Brigade 2506 came ashore there on 17 April 1961 and were beaten within three days.

Guinness named which inlet on Vieques the world's brightest bioluminescent bay in 2006?

Mosquito Bay, on Vieques's south coast, owes its Guinness title to dense populations of the dinoflagellate Pyrodinium bahamense, which flash neon blue whenever the water is disturbed.

Which sculptor created the world's first underwater sculpture park, off Grenada, in 2006?

Jason deCaires Taylor's Molinere Underwater Sculpture Park opened in 2006; its best-known piece, Vicissitudes, is a ring of life-size children holding hands, and it draws snorkellers away from fragile natural reefs.

Stingray City, where visitors pet wild southern stingrays on a sandbar, is in which territory?

The Cayman Islands' Stingray City lies in Grand Cayman's North Sound; the rays are thought to have gathered where fishermen cleaned their catch in the calm shallows, and learned that a boat engine meant food.

Saba Bank, the Atlantic's largest submarine atoll, is a national park of which country?

The Netherlands counts Saba Bank among its national parks; it was protected in 2010, after tankers bound for a nearby oil terminal had for years dropped anchor on the bank and torn up its seabed.

Navassa Island, held by the US under the Guano Islands Act, is also claimed by which country?

Haiti protested at once and has kept its claim ever since; an American sea captain, Peter Duncan, took Navassa for its guano in 1857, and President Buchanan backed him by executive order the following year.

Willemstad's Queen Emma Bridge, which swings aside for ships, is what type of bridge?

Pontoon boats carry the Queen Emma Bridge, built in 1888; it once charged a toll that barefoot walkers were spared, and free ferries take pedestrians across whenever it swings open.

Sailing with Ojeda in 1499, Vespucci is said to have named a coast 'Little Venice' after seeing what?

Houses on stilts over the water reminded him of Venice, the usual story goes, and Veneziola became Venezuela in Spanish; a crewmate, Fernández de Enciso, wrote instead that a local people called themselves the Veneciuela.

Nueva Cádiz, an early Spanish town on tiny Cubagua off Venezuela, grew rich on what?

Pearls from Cubagua's oyster beds made Nueva Cádiz rich, but the Spaniards fished the beds out within a few decades; with nothing left to harvest, the town had been abandoned by the 1540s.

A resident group of which whales lives off Dominica all year round?

Sperm whales usually keep to the open ocean, but off Dominica the seabed drops away so steeply that a group lives close to shore all year, alongside spinner and bottlenose dolphins.

On which Grenadine island do whalers hold an International Whaling Commission quota to hunt humpbacks from small open boats?

Bequia learned whaling from Yankee whalers in the 1800s; its islanders have been allowed up to four humpbacks a year, taken with hand-thrown harpoons, a limit they rarely reach.

More than 97% of which Caribbean reef grazer died in a 1983 mass mortality?

The long-spined sea urchin Diadema antillarum lost over 97% of its population to an unidentified pathogen in 1983 and 1984; without its grazing, leafy macroalgae overgrew many reefs and coral cover fell further.

Acropora palmata, a key Caribbean reef-builder, is commonly named after which animal's antlers?

Acropora palmata is elkhorn coral, its flattened branches shaped like elk antlers; a disease outbreak in the early 1980s killed most of it, leaving under 3% of its former numbers, and the US listed it as threatened in 2006.

The dominant seagrass of Caribbean shallows, spreading mainly by underground rhizomes, is commonly called what?

Turtle grass, Thalassia testudinum, spreads mainly by underground rhizomes, so a whole meadow can be clones of one plant; green turtles graze it, and it cannot grow in fresh water.

Which Caribbean crustacean marches in single-file lines of hundreds across the seabed in autumn?

Spiny lobsters line up by the hundred and march across the seabed, usually in autumn and perhaps set off by the season's first storms; why they do it is still not known.

Nassau groupers gather by the thousand to spawn in December and January, timed to what?

The full moon of December and January draws Nassau groupers back to the same reef points every year; fishers who learned the timing emptied whole gatherings, helping push the species to critically endangered.

Which Welsh privateer sacked Panama City in 1671 and later became lieutenant governor of Jamaica?

Henry Morgan's raid broke a fresh Anglo-Spanish peace treaty, so he was arrested and shipped to London in 1672, where he was feted, knighted in 1674 and sent back as Jamaica's lieutenant governor.

Which English privateer died off Panama in 1596 and was buried at sea, by tradition in a lead coffin?

Francis Drake died of fever, probably dysentery, on 28 January 1596 after a failed attack on Panama and was buried at sea off Portobelo, by tradition in a lead coffin and his armour; divers have searched for it ever since.

Who led the Spanish defence of Cartagena de Indias against Admiral Vernon's huge 1741 expedition?

Blas de Lezo had already lost an eye, a leg and the use of an arm in earlier battles; he held Cartagena until disease had killed thousands of Vernon's men and the British gave up the siege.

Which British admiral beat de Grasse at the 1782 Battle of the Saintes, fought off Dominica?

George Rodney's victory forced France and Spain to drop their planned invasion of Jamaica; he is often credited with pioneering the tactic of breaking the enemy's line, though the credit is disputed.

Panama's island-studded Caribbean province of Guna Yala was formerly known by what name?

San Blas was the outsiders' name; the Guna, whose armed uprising in February 1925 opened the way to self-rule, later had it changed to Kuna Yala and, in 2011, to Guna Yala, the spelling closest to their own language.

In July 2024, Hurricane Beryl made its first landfall as a Category 4 on which Grenadine island?

Beryl struck Carriacou on 1 July 2024, damaging or destroying nearly every building on the island, and within a day became the earliest Category 5 hurricane the Atlantic had ever recorded.

Record-setting Hurricane Gilbert made a Category 5 landfall in 1988 on which Mexican island?

Gilbert crossed Cozumel as a Category 5 on 14 September 1988, two days after raking Jamaica end to end; its 888 mbar central pressure stood as the Atlantic record for 17 years.

Ian Fleming, who wrote his spy novels in Jamaica, borrowed the name James Bond from an expert on Caribbean what?

Birds were the real James Bond's subject: Fleming, a keen birdwatcher, kept the ornithologist's field guide Birds of the West Indies at his Jamaican home and took the author's name because it sounded so ordinary.

In 1962 Kennedy avoided the word 'blockade' and called the naval cordon of Cuba a what?

Kennedy chose 'quarantine' because a blockade is legally an act of war; the softer word also helped Washington win the backing of the Organization of American States, and Argentine destroyers joined the cordon.

What was the US codename for the October 1983 invasion of Grenada?

Operation Urgent Fury began on 25 October 1983, six days after the execution of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop; Grenada marks the date with a public holiday called Thanksgiving Day.

The buccaneers based on the island of Tortuga in the 1600s called themselves what?

The Brethren of the Coast were a loose brotherhood of French and English buccaneers on Tortuga who preyed on Spanish shipping; Columbus is said to have named the island in 1492 because its outline looked like a turtle's shell.

The Pitons, twin volcanic spires rising from the sea near Soufrière, stand on which island?

The Pitons stand on Saint Lucia's southwest coast near Soufrière; a World Heritage Site, the twin peaks are so much the island's emblem that the triangles on its national flag stand for them.

Stranded in Jamaica in 1504, Columbus kept his men fed by correctly predicting what?

Columbus, stranded since June 1503, used an almanac to forecast the lunar eclipse of 29 February 1504 and warned the islanders that God would darken the moon unless they went on supplying food.