Something came out of this cave that biology had no box for.
In the late 1970s a biologist scuba diving in Ben's Cave, on Grand Bahama, collected a small opaque animal that looked vaguely like a centipede. It proved to be a new species, Speleonectes lucayensis. It also proved to belong to a class of crustacean nobody had ever described, which was named Remipedia, oar foot. Blind, built for permanent darkness, and living in the flooded passages under Grand Bahama for millions of years. New species turn up constantly. A new class does not.
Ben's Cave sits in Lucayan National Park, established in 1982 and expanded in 2015. The park protects one of the longest charted underwater cave systems in the world, around 10.3 kilometres of mapped tunnel, along with pine forest, mangrove creek, coral reef and Gold Rock Beach. Every Bahamian terrestrial vegetation zone is represented inside its boundaries, and it is now the second most visited national park in the country.
The other discovery came in 1986, when archaeologists found the skeletal remains of six Lucayans on the floor of one of the caves, with artefacts elsewhere in the park. One was sent to the Smithsonian, carbon dated, and confirmed as Lucayan era. That made it hard evidence of pre-Columbian settlement on Grand Bahama. The Lucayans, who the park is named for, used these caves as a source of fresh water and as ceremonial burial places, and the low oxygen down there is why so much survived to be found.
Above ground it is an Important Bird Area, with thick-billed vireo, Bahama swallow and olive-capped warbler among the residents. The stretch of Gold Rock Creek it protects is the last intact mangrove tidal creek on the southern shore of Grand Bahama, and from the boardwalk you can watch saltwater fish, wading birds and waterfowl working through the stilt roots.
There is a visitor centre, a warden, boardwalks and trails.
Bahamas
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Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
