The main minerals in The Bahamas are salt and aragonite, (a type of limestone).
No commercial mining takes place in The Bahamas.
The main aggregate that occurs naturally in The Bahamas is aragonite, a type of limestone. The Great Bahama Bank has been the source for millions of tonnes of aragonite. During the 1950s, four areas of the bank were used for offshore aragonite extraction. By the mid-1980s, offshore aragonite production was in decline, with just one section of the bank commercially mined today.
The various ridges found throughout the Bahama Islands are made of rock that is used for building stone. As elsewhere in the Caribbean, sand is mined, often illegally, with negative environmental effects.
More than a million tonnes of salt is produced annually by the Morton Salt Company at Inagua.
Prime Minister Perry Christie is hopeful of The Bahamas being able to export sand on a grand scale, but his plans are being frustrated by restrictions preventing US federal money from being spent on sand imports. The Bahamas Agricultural and Industrial Corporation has been looking at a potential export market for sand, ideally focusing on countries that are not competitors for the tourism market.
The Conservation and Protection of the Physical Landscape of The Bahamas Act 1997 governs quarrying.
