Bahamas Boating and Fishing Fees July 2025 – Association of Bahamas Marinas
While in the Bahamas be sure to visit our sponsors: Staniel Cay Yacht Club and Royal Marsh Harbour Yacht Club.
While in the Bahamas be sure to visit our sponsors: Staniel Cay Yacht Club and Royal Marsh Harbour Yacht Club.
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When all else fails, try journalism. Phew! Four days: Three stories and one opinion piece about shennanigans in the Bahamas. Normally, I release stories on more of an every-other-day schedule. Anyway, if you are among those who have now joined us because of the coverage of Bahamas cruising-fee hikes and moorings boondogle, welcome. For those of you who are less interested in that topic, worry not. Loose Cannon will soon return to its normal nautical mix and to its normal pace. And you are hereby spared a fifth story on the topic. The story would have been about resurgent corruption in the Bahamas government, as it begins to assume the trappings of a narco-state, complete with a rise in gang violence and homicides. I have decided against a long-form treatment because the subject is not boat-specific enough. Someone should write it, though. Cliff Notes VersionIn writing their November indictment of 11 Bahamians, including high-ranking policemen, U.S. prosecutors set the stage for the arrests, describing the growth of Bahamas government corruption since the end of the Covid epidemic. Besides the actual defendants, the indictment repeatedly references “other corrupt officials” in “key government institutions.” One defendant gave feds the name of “a high-ranking Bahamian politician” who had offered to commit the country’s entire law enforcement apparatus to moving cocaine in exchange for a $2 million payoff. If true, that sum must now be considered the going rate to purchase, or at least rent a leader of the Bahamian people. Thankfully for the cruising crowd, most of the criminal violence isn’t happening in the Abacos, Exumas or Out Islands, but that does not mean we would be unaffected in the long run. One cannot help but catch a whiff of the same Nassau corruption in the mooring scheme and crazy fee increases. Both were rolled out with the kind of stealth and suddeness that suggest, as American prosecutors like to say, “a cognizance of guilt.” The Bahamas enacted some anti-corruption laws in response to the drug scandal, but an opposing senator this week noted that the actual enforcement budget was only $30,000 and no results have been produced. (By the way, it is not too farfetched to think that these laws may have been dictated to Bahamian leaders by the U.S. Justice Department via State, in exchange for not indicting that “high-ranking politician” and possibly destabilizing or—dare I say it—decapitating an allied government.) Interestingly, the institutions that track government corruption around the world based on measurable factors do not rate the Bahamas all that high in malfeasance. My conclusion is that the rankings must be based on lagging indicators. Altogether this is a tragic state of affairs, especially for honest Bahamians. Their island nation, a place of beauty, had also been a place of normalcy for cruisers, not beset by the thefts and thuggery of the lower Caribbean, nor the endemic official corruption at the retail level in many Latin American ports, nor the ever-shrinking options for anchoring of Florida waters. Folks, I’m taking tomorrow off. Maybe Monday too. As always, comes the pitch: If you’ve been with Loose Cannon for a while, and you like what you’ve been reading, and you can afford it, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. There’s more where this came from. LOOSE CANNON is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support the work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. You’re currently a free subscriber to LOOSE CANNON. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. © 2025 |
Cruisers Net publishes Loose Cannon articles with Captain Swanson’s permission in hopes that mariners with salt water in their veins will subscribe. $7 a month or $56 for the year, and you may cancel at any time.
When all else fails, try journalism. Entry Fees Distract as Bahamas Eyes the Prize, a Carbon-Credit BoondogleSeagrass Beds Said To Be Worth $50 Billion
Like crypto currency, the carbon-exchange market is something oft mentioned but little understood, including by me. This story assumes the concept is not just a figment of our collective imagination. Stand by for Bahamas Moorings II. The sequel appears likely. The key to understanding the “insane” and ultimately unsuccessful first attempt to establish rental moorings in the Exumas appears to have been something as mundane as seagrass. Not the actual turtle food: Seagrass, the idea. The Bahamas are sitting on a “blue carbon” treasure trove whose jewels are seagrasses, salt marshes and mangroves. According to DBG, a player in the carbon-offset industry, the Bahamas has $50 billion-worth ready to sell. So what did the Bahamas government do? On January 23, it leased the seagrass component of said trove to a private company in exchange for a promise of three pennies for every future dollar earned from mooring rentals—an unknowable revenue-stream. Bahamian leaders certainly must have known end of free anchoring would have been unpopular in its target market, foreign cruisers. Would we be willing to pay? That question is back again as cruising community reacts to the outrage of the day—a quintupling of entry fees. StenchThe odor of corruption around that $2.5 million deal was so strong, that the same government that had secretly approved the project soon ordered that it “cease and desist” and that all moorings be removed. That was on February 23, and…goshdarnit… The moorings are still in place. Free, at least temporarily. Creating a mooring monopoly “doesn’t even make sense,” Peter Maury told The Tribune newspaper of Nassau as it followed up after Loose Cannon broke the story back in February. Maury is president of the Association of Bahamas Marinas, whose members, like most Bahamians, were blindsided by the sudden appearance of barges installing helix anchors and floating balls. “Insane,” one of Maury’s colleagues quipped.
The lease assigning control of more than 4,000 acres of seabed to a single company granted Bahamas Moorings Ltd. the right to provide mooring services “in the Exuma and elsewhere in the country.” Would the Abacos and Eleuthera have been next? As it happens, the Bahamas are home to an astounding 40 percent of the world’s seagrass beds, which sequester huge amounts of carbon on the seafloor, according to scientists. The moorings appeared to have been cover to exercise control over a carbon offset to be sold to industries unable to reduce their carbon footprint on their own. Boaters BlamedIn response to Loose Cannon’s back-to-back articles on the moorings controversy (but before the project was canceled), the Bahamas government issued a news release, which said the quiet part out loud: “This initiative is also a key component of the Bahamas Blue Carbon Project, which aims to generate funding through carbon credit sales linked to the protection of seagrass beds and marine sediment—critical natural carbon sinks.” The same release blamed you, the cruising public, for damaging seagrass beds:
But experts contradicted the government, saying many, if not most of the planned mooring fields have sandy bottoms entirely without reefs or grasses. A prime example—where mooring installation was underway until the cease and desist order—is the anchorage at Big Major Cay, famous for good holding and swimming pigs. “The initial mooring balls in Normans Cay, Big Majors and Black Point are installed in some of the best holding clear sand in Exuma. There are bits of grass around, but nothing that even remotely resembles a nursery environment,” said Addison Chan, author of the Bahamas Land & Sea app and its corresponding Facebook group. “I haven’t studied every chart in detail, but my sense is the leases cover the best anchorages in the Bahamas, which tend to be areas that are currently free of grass. Take for example the areas around Compass Cay, an area that is difficult to anchor because of shallow water and grassy flats, the leased lands cover the viable areas of clear sand. In fact, the area that falls within Pipe Creek appears to be shaped by the clear sand area.” Loose Cannon interviewed a Bahamian naturalist who asked not to be named for fear of retribution. Familiar with the cays in question, this person confirmed that many of the anchorages are entirely sand. “Grass ain’t everywhere they claim, so they ain’t saving no seagrass,” the naturalist said, rebutting to the government’s defense of the project. As far as potential for moorings to aid in seagrass restoration, it would likely happen only in places where grass beds had been historically. “Just putting moorings in pure sand doesn’t generate growth of seagrass, if it wasn’t there before,” the person said.
Sand not grass. This is a photo of the large central mooring area noted on the Big Major chart. The bottom is nearly all sand, as anyone who has visited the swimming pigs can attest. And what about the proposal that cruisers could choose to anchor as long as they were willing to pay 55 cents or $1.10 per foot, depending on LOA? Critics back in February said that if saving the seabeed were really the motivation, anchoring would be banned altogether. Today, the new fee structure monetizes the practice by charging cruisers who wish to avoid marinas a $300 anchoring fee. A bill of lading obtained by Loose Cannon described the Bahamas Moorings order for Chinese-made helical screw anchors as being accompanied by 38 and 25mm open-link chain. While moorings employ significantly less scope than anchoring, an all-rope mooring rode would be even less damaging than a rope-chain setup that this document suggests. A photo taken by a cruiser shows one new mooring attached not to a helical screw but a big conventional anchor and chain. GreenwashingSo, how did the question of seagrass fit in the moorings/blue carbon narrative? The government says moorings will protect seagrass. Experts say there tends not to be seagrass where moorings were actually placed. Maybe, what was being sold is just the belief that mooring fields will protect Bahamas seagrass. The term for this is greenwashing. Cohn, Cohn & Colapinto, a U.S. law firm that specializes in defending whistleblowers, notes that carbon-offset scams often share the following characteristics:
Will Cruisers Quit Coming?The Tribune reporter also quoted Eric Carey, the ex-Bahamas National Trust (BNT) executive director, who worried that having to pay for moorings and/or anchoring may create a tipping point in the cruising community. What he said might well apply to today’s entry-fee controversy:
What Carey may have been too polite to say is that cruisers as a whole are a parsimonious lot. Groceries, liquor and fuel are already 30 percent higher in the Bahamas compared to the U.S. Dockage is very expensive, too. Recently, Bahamian officials have been enforcing immigration rules in capricious and arbitrary ways, stressing out many mom-and-pop cruisers. Free anchoring has been the spoonful of sugar that helped the medicine go down. Without it, the Bahamas marine industry fears the worst. Surely, the principals of Bahamas Moorings and their eco-affiliates had to have been aware that their overt business might have failed simply because cruisers wouldn’t participate. Maybe, that new $300 anchoring fee is intended as an incentive to use those leftover moorings once a new administrative structure is in place. The lead story in the May 1 Guardian newspaper described how the prime minister was “pushing ahead with its efforts to monetize blue carbon credits through a new agreement with a Chicago based company.” A government news release described how Carbon Management Limited (CML), a Bahamian-controlled public-private partnership, will turn seaweed into cash:
The question is: How might this lucrative scheme be related to the new fee structure? The timing, of course, could be nothing more than coincidence. Come forward, Bahamas sources, and enlighten us. Tell us about those “real carbon removals.” Stand by for more reporting on the fees, moorings and other shennanigans happening in our favorite island nation. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the next day. LOOSE CANNON covers hard news, technical issues and nautical history. Every so often he tries to be funny. Subscribe for free to support the work. If you’ve been reading for a while—and you like it—consider upgrading to paid.
© 2025 |
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When all else fails, try journalism.
Bahamian legislators have amended proposed cruising fee increases to go easier on the average visiting sailboat and trawler. Instead of $1,650, a cruiser who fishes and anchors would pay $1,150.
Lawmakers have done this by adjusting the catagories. Previously there were three catagories: up to 34 feet, 35 to 100 feet and over 100 feet. Now the catagories are up to 50 feet, over 50 to 100 feet and over 100 feet.
So instead of paying $1,000 for entry on your average 44-foot sailboat, the cruising permit will cost $500 feet. The proposed anchoring fee remains at $200 or $350, depending on whether up to or over 34 feet. The proposed fishing permit also remains at $200 or $350 depending of whether up to or over 34 feet. The fishing permit is valid for two entries within 30 days.
The anchoring fees for vessels over 100 feet is $1,500.
Facebook has been ablaze with indignation ever since the foreign cruising community learned about the bill. The center-console crowd was also angered, but they too got some relief in the latest version.
The frequent digital cruising card (FDCC), which caters to the long-weekend visitors boating over from South Florida, now costs $1,500 for vessels up to 50 feet and is good for two years of unlimited travel. Boats over 50 and up to 100 feet will cost $2,500 and those over 100 will cost $8,000.
Echoing the Bahamas Prime Minister’s own anti-American boater rhetoric, much of the Bahamian response on social media was a collective “good ridance, you cheapskates,” accusing foreigners of taking their fish, polluting their waters with sewage and messing up the seabed with our anchors.
But those sentiments were not shared by people in the marine industry such as Stephen Kappeler of the Bimini Big Game Club Resort and Marina, who told a reporter from the Tribune newspaper of Nassau that he had fielded 12 cancelations that day and expected the trend to continue. Kappeler said:
Remember, when we cancel a booking, this is money that somebody’s already paid, a deposit they’ve already paid. When you book a room and you book a slip with us, that’s somewhere in the area of $500 in business just the first night deposit. And guests are coming in for two, three, four nights.
So you could multiply and extend that out to understand what the value of a cancellation is. And they’re looking for the refund of their money. I can tell you, there were a dozen alone today. We’re a 50-room resort. So if this continues at a pace of a dozen a day… I’m sure not everybody’s got the news or got the message. So this thing is going to be exponential.
That was yesterday. The Tribune tends to be less friendly to the ruling party than the Bahamas other major newspaper, and today it published another story on the issue that began with this:
The Bahamian tourism industry and its three main promotion boards have untied to urge the Prime Minister to “pause” new and increased boating fees that “could not have come at a worse time.”
In their joint letter to the PM, The Bahamas Hotel and Tourism Association, the Bahamas Out Islands Promotions Board, the Nassau/Paradise Island Promotions Board and the Grand Bahama Island Promotion Board described a “high spending, buoyant, seafaring visitor market. who contribute significantly to a vast number of tourism business owners…throughout the archipelago.”
The promotion boards cited reports of numerous marina cancellations. They noted that the nation’s tourism industry was facing uncertain times and that while the cruise-ship sector appeared to have a solid footing, the rest of the industry “faces far less predictable, precarious headwinds.”
There has been no pause—at least not yet—but Attorney General Ryan Pinder spoke to the Bahamas Senate Tuesday, arguing that the new version of the bill strikes “an appropriate balance” that raises fees but also extends the duration of a cruising permit from three months to a year.
LOOSE CANNON covers hard news, technical issues and nautical history. Every so often he tries to be funny. Subscribe for free to support the work. If you’ve been reading for a while—and you like it—consider upgrading to paid.
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Makers Air and Staniel Cay Yacht Club, A CRUISERS NET SPONSOR, offer convenient flights to the Bahamas.
Makers Air and Staniel Cay Yacht Club, A CRUISERS NET SPONSOR, offer convenient flights to the Bahamas.
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While in the Bahamas be sure to visit our sponsors: Staniel Cay Yacht Club and Royal Marsh Harbour Yacht Club.
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Staniel Cay Yacht Club, A CRUISERS NET SPONSOR, looks forward to seeing you all as you visit the Bahamas!
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When all else fails, try journalism.
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After a spate of posts on Facebook showing astonishing ignorance about the dangers of eating barracuda in the Bahamas, Loose Cannon contacted Clémence Gatti, who has a PhD in Pathophysiology and works as a researcher at the Laboratory of Marine Biotoxins at Papeete, French Polynesia. She is one of the world’s foremost experts on ciguatera.
Makers Air and Staniel Cay Yacht Club, A CRUISERS NET SPONSOR, offer convenient flights to the Bahamas.
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When cruising the Bahamas, consider joining Royal Marsh Harbour Yacht Club, a premier yacht club in the Abacos and A CRUISERS NET SPONSOR!
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