Bay islands

Roatán

The Bay Islands are a group of small islands in northern Honduras. The population of the Bay Islands in 2020 is about 110,000 people. The main islands of the Bay Islands are Utila, Roatan, and Guanaja but Roatan is the biggest of them all. It has an area of 101 square miles and lies about thirty miles offshore in the Caribbean Sea. The Bay islands have no rivers and a small number of streams which usually end in mangrove swamps. There are, however, a large amount of cool water springs in the Islands. The island was first sighted by Christopher Columbus in 1502 and was settled by English buccaneers in 1642. Between 1650 and 1850 the islands were contested by Spain, Honduras, and England. The islands were annexed to Great Britain in 1852 but then given up to Honduras in 1859. The chief activities are growing  bananas, cassava coconuts, sweet potatoes, livestock, and fishing. Overall the Bay Islands are a unique geographical feature that Honduras has and shows the diversity of Honduras’s geography.

Utila

An island of the Bay islands

The largest of the Bay islands

Guanaja

A major island but not the largest