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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Richard Luscombe in Freeport, Grand Bahama

Paradise lost? How cruise companies are ‘eating up’ the Bahamas

A collection of images showing building work and how one of the beaches will look, with a huge cruise ship behind it.
Top left and right: Carnival Cruise Line’s Celebration Key resort under construction; middle: Minnie Mouse at Disney’s Castaway Cay resort; bottom left: a CGI render of the Royal Caribbean’s planned resort in Nassau; and right: a press call at the start of construction. Composite: Alamy/Royal Caribbean

Joseph Darville has fond memories of swimming with his young son off the south coast of Grand Bahama island, and watching together as scores of dolphins frolicked offshore. A lifelong environmentalist now aged 82, Darville has always valued the rich marine habitat and turquoise blue seas of the Bahamas, which have lured locals and tourists alike for generations.

The dolphins are now mostly gone, he says, as human encroachment proliferated and the environment deteriorated. “You don’t see them now; the jetskis go by and frighten them off.

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