Lucayan National Park and the Cave System

What the park protects

The Bahamas National Trust records that Lucayan National Park was established in 1982 and expanded in 2015, and that it protects one of the longest charted underwater cave systems together with preserved remains of the Lucayan Indians.

Two very different kinds of heritage in one boundary. The cave system is a geological and biological record. The remains are a human one, and they are the reason the name on the gate is not a decoration.

The people the park is named for

The Lucayans were here before the Bahamas was a British possession, before it was independent, and before any of the history most visitors arrive with. Their remains are preserved in these caves, which makes this a burial context as well as a nature reserve.

That should govern how the place is visited. Photograph the landscape and not what is human. Touch nothing and remove nothing. Take a guide's instruction about where not to go as final rather than as an obstacle. The ordinary courtesies at a grave apply here, and the distance in time does not suspend them.

A species that was new to science

The Trust records that Speleonectes lucayensis, a species new to science, was collected in Ben's Cave within the park.

This is worth pausing on. A species described for the first time from this system means the caves were not simply unexplored by visitors but unexplored by science, and it tells you what kind of environment you are in: isolated water, stable conditions, and organisms that exist here because nothing has reached them from anywhere else. It is also why the rules about what you carry into the water are not bureaucratic.

Popular, and the figure the Trust publishes

The Bahamas National Trust records this as the second most visited national park in the Bahamas. It is on Grand Bahama, one of the two islands carrying most of the country's visitor infrastructure, which is a large part of the explanation and is worth knowing when you plan the time of day you go.

Practical notes

Grand Bahama is one of the two islands the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office names in its crime advice, alongside New Providence, so the ordinary precautions in our safety guide apply to getting there and back rather than to the park itself. Medical facilities on Grand Bahama are better than on the outlying islands, which is one of the few places in this cluster where that sentence runs in the visitor's favor.

What this guide does not tell you

No opening hours, no fees, no trail descriptions, no diving arrangements, no cave length in figures. The Bahamas National Trust administers the park and publishes the current arrangements; this page does not restate what it has not read.

Sources

• Bahamas National Trust: Lucayan National Park: established in 1982 and expanded in 2015, protecting one of the longest charted underwater cave systems together with preserved remains of the Lucayan Indians, and now the second most visited national park in the Bahamas, where a species new to science, Speleonectes lucayensis, was collected in Ben's Cave. Accessed 18 September 2026.
• UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office: Bahamas health: the instruction to call 911 or 919 and ask for an ambulance, to begin health preparation at least 8 weeks before the trip, the record that medical treatment is of a good standard but can be expensive, that emergency medical facilities are limited on all the Family Islands with serious cases transferred to Nassau or Freeport, and the estimate that at least 7,600 adults aged 15 or over are living with HIV. Accessed 18 September 2026.