All About Caribbean Beaches

It is the ultimate 21st Century quest – to find the finest beach on which to… well, to do very little, really... just sizzle in the sun and then cool off with a swim… The Caribbean islands are certainly happy hunting grounds for the world’s finest beaches.

There are hundreds of them -  secluded bays with a half-moon curve of luscious blond sand, stretches of unlimited strand to walk, quiet beaches, lively beaches - backed along their entire length with bars, all with competing music systems… There are beaches in coves dripping with tropical greenery, remote stretches of undeveloped, palm-backed sand and beaches that are little more than a sand-bar that rises out of the turquoise sea.

So why does the Caribbean have such good beaches? Do all islands have them? Why is the sea so blue? And where does that perfect sand, so soft between the toes, actually come from?

Light-coloured sand derives generally from coral. Mostly by erosion from wave action. Unexpectedly, it is also created by fish. Some species, like parrot fish, eat the coral polyps and bite off chunks of the reef with them. The sand is created in their digestive system.

Coral reefs grow in tropical waters anywhere they can gain hold close to the sea’s surface, so they live on coastal slopes, but also any flat land underwater and rocky outcrops reaching up towards the surface of the sea. They lay down a limestone ‘skeleton’ base as they grow, and then continue to expand on top of it. When they can’t grow up, out of the water, they grow out. Over the millennia corals grow into reefs, pushing out into the ocean to form fringing reefs. Older, flatter islands, or sections of uplifted sedimentary limestone like the Bahamas, have the best chance to create white beaches. Look out for the Leeward Islands in the north-eastern Caribbean, the Virgin Islands, parts of the Greater Antilles, in Jamaica and Cuba, and the Bahamas.

Other islands, like the volcanic islands of the Eastern Caribbean, have less opportunity to for reefs to grow. Their steep sides descend to huge depths, so all the corals clamour near the surface but cannot grow out from the islands. Most also have rivers - fresh water inhibits coral growth. In places they have beaches with black sand, dissolved from the island’s volcanic rocks, but in bays where corals can catch - and on shallow underwater land – like the Grenadines, between St Lucia and Martinique and around Guadeloupe – corals will flourish and the sand will be white and plentiful.

So yes, when you go to the beach you may be sitting on the residue of a fish’s digestive system… but there’s nothing quite like powder-soft sand shelving gently into gin-clear water that recedes to a shallow, electric blue sea…  And most Caribbean islands have a share of them – secluded coves and mile-long strands, even offshore blips with a single palm tree that might disappear at high tide –