Exuma Cays Land & Sea Park boundaries: corner coordinates and area

Anyone planning a route through the Exumas needs to know where the park starts and stops, because the rules change at the line: fees, moorings, anchoring limits and the no-take zone all apply inside it. The Exuma Cays Land & Sea Park hub links every guide on those rules. The Bahamas National Trust publishes the boundary as four corner coordinates, set out below.

Corner coordinates

The boundary is set out in degrees, minutes and seconds¹. The decimal columns below are our conversion of those values, for chartplotters that take decimal degrees.

Corner	Latitude (N)	Longitude (W)	Decimal degrees
NW	24°30′37″	76°52′37″	24.5103, -76.87691
NE	24°35′30″	76°45′50″	24.5917, -76.76391
SW	24°14′25″	76°36′02″	24.2403, -76.60061
SE	24°18′37″	76°28′47″	24.3103, -76.47971

The two northern corners lie farther west than the two southern ones, so the park is a long block running northwest to southeast¹. Enter them as waypoints, then check them against current charts and any marks you see on the water. Join the corners in the order NW, NE, SE, SW to close the outline. Latitude is north and longitude is west for every corner, so make sure your plotter is set to W before you type the longitudes, or the waypoints will land in the wrong hemisphere.

How big is the park

The park covers 112,640 acres of land and sea¹. That is 176 square miles¹, since an acre is 1/640 of a square mile and 112,640 divided by 640 is 176.

The area inside the boundary includes reefs, mangroves and seagrass beds³. The boundary takes in land and sea together, so the rules covered below apply on the water as well as on the cays¹.

Which cays are inside

The park does not take in every cay between Nassau and George Town. A US National Park Service survey report from the 1950s describes the park area as those cays from Shroud Cay to Bell Island, except cays already under lease or privately owned². That report is a historical document, so read it for the park’s original shape, not as the current legal boundary.

The same report names the major cays in the park area as Shroud, Hawksbill, Cistern, Warderick Wells, Hall’s Pond, O’Brien’s, Bell Island and Little Bell². Shroud Cay is the northern landmark and Bell Island the southern one².

For a single cay, check its own page. Warderick Wells holds the park headquarters, and our Shroud Cay guide covers the northern end.

What changes at the line

Inside the boundary the park rules apply. The park is a no-take zone: no fishing, conching, shelling or lobstering, and nothing living or dead may be removed from within the boundaries of Exuma Park⁴. There are fines and confiscation of vessels for poaching violations⁴. Anchoring is not permitted in the mooring fields, on coral reefs and certain other designated areas⁴.

Rates for moorings and anchoring are in the park fees and mooring fees guide. All vessels, dinghies and jet skis included, must run at idle speed in any mooring field or anchorage⁴. Jet skis must stay at least 300 yards off any moored or anchored vessel⁴. On the northern cays, the north tidal creek on Shroud Cay is a strict idle speed, no-wake zone⁴. Trash disposal is not available inside the park, so take out everything you bring in⁴.

Read the full set in the park rules guide and the no-take zone guide before you cross into the park.

Using the coordinates

Treat the four corners as a quick check, not as a replacement for a chart. Enter all four as waypoints, draw the outline on your plotter, and plan your nights with the line in view.

If you are unsure whether a spot is inside, call the park office: hail “Exuma Park” on VHF channel 09¹. The office is on a remote small island, so contact can sometimes be challenging¹. For the park’s origins and why it exists, see what the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park is.