Bahamas News
Beneath the Waves, Shark Week Crew Filming in Nassau with Stuart Cove Dive, Country superstar Brad Paisley playing for the science underlying stunner
#TheBahamas, July 7, 2021 – Producers, film makers, divers and support crew fanned out across the waters off the southwest coast of New Providence recently, shooting footage for Shark Week that will air the second week in July captivating viewers in up to 88 million homes and multiple platforms in 224 countries.
The episode shot in The Bahamas featuring local divers and marine scientists like Dr. Austin Gallagher (Beneath the Waves) will air on the Discovery Channel July 13.
Headlined “The Science of Sound” it explores sharks’ reactions to the sound of music, country music in particular, thanks to the picking, plunking, playing and familiar voice of country superstar Brad Paisley who added star power to what is likely to be cone of the most watched TV shows of the year. Paisley played live on the dive boat, with his recordings lowered by divers through underwater sonar equipment and moved with them as they swam and interacted with dozens of curious nurse and reef sharks. A diver himself, the singer-songwriter spent two days experiencing the deep with local divers like Kareem Bethell and Tyson Smith.
Stuart Cove Dive provided vessels and dive gear. And every minute was filled with action. Two cameras topside, two below. Drones. For every diver, a buddy, for every producer, a back-up with a different set of eyes. Audio. Standby medical, head of emergency room operations at a major health system with his 80-lb case of everything that matters right down to a watch-size scanner capable of following the movements of internal parts. The budget for the single episode — whopping and undisclosed. But consider this: Local divers, dive boats, nearly a week of filming, executive and line producers from as far away as L.A. who also do NatGeo, Netflix, the History Channel, HGTV and the Food Network. The goal – to shoot 100% of the episode, all 43 minutes, 20 seconds of non-advertising footage, right there, where we are today off New Providence and near where they have been all week. The result: Nearly perfect, they got 98%.
“It’s a great place to shoot,” a producer tells me. “It’s safe, it’s easy to get to not like some of the places we have to do that are far out from land over fairly treacherous seas, and celebrities love it here.”
When it comes to what it takes to make Shark Week filming work, Stuart Cove is up to the task, running back and forth to deliver another diver, a different camera, to take someone off the vessel who has to get to the airport. You’d think the half hour run out to the deep would get old, but it never does.
“We have been working with Shark Week every year since the first episode was filmed in The Bahamas in 1988. And every year I think what can Discovery Channel do to top this and the next year they come up with something even more interesting or scientifically important,” says Cove, who founded and operates the country’s largest world-renowned dive business. This year, he had an additional hand, his son, Travis, a diver turned actor who doubled for another in the show.
Cove, a director of Save The Bays and active in coral reef preservation, believes Shark Week has helped sensitize the public to the value of sharks. “Jaws made us afraid, Shark Week makes us understand. Presenting the real true story of the value of sharks helps us appreciate the important role they play in the marine eco-system.”
Dr. Gallagher agrees.
“Marine scientists, including myself, give The Bahamas great credit for the country’s shark sanctuary legislation,” said Gallagher, who has been exploring and documenting marine resources in The Bahamas for more than a decade and says there is no body of water comparable to it. A proponent of naming the waters the Lucayan Sea, he cites the statistic that an individual is more likely to be struck by lightning twice than to be bitten by a shark.
“Research which we have helped contribute to demonstrates that tragically, unlike The Bahamas, there are countries where greed and avarice create a shark fin trade that claims fins from up to 73 million sharks a year,” says Dr. Gallagher, who talks respectfully of the marine creatures he has just been swimming with as he peels off a standard wet suit and unloads his dive gear from the second dive of the afternoon. “And while The Bahamas is protecting sharks and as you can see, the population out here today is healthy and active and non-threatening, sharks in many places elsewhere continue to be threatened and that is heart-breaking for anyone who studies their role in the marine eco-system.”
A Discovery Channel press release on Shark Week says a study published in Nature magazine earlier this year found that oceanic sharks and rays declined by at least 71% since 1970.
Shark Week, Discovery Channel’s most popular program, will run from Sunday, July 11 through Sunday, July 18 with the Bahamas episode on the third night, Tuesday. Discovery Channel dubs its 2021 shows a ‘jawesome lineup’ beginning with a docu-series and includes, in addition to Brad Paisley, William Shatner, JB Smoove, Tiffany Haddish and others with celebrities diving alongside marine biologists and representatives from respected science institutes like Beneath the Waves and Oceana.
Shark Week 2021 precedes the Summer Olympics and, says Discovery Channel, promises “to deliver all-new groundbreaking shark stories revealing remarkable insights into the mysterious world of these magnificent creatures.”
By Diane Phillips
Header: Producers, directors, camera and drone crew, local divers and marine scientists pile aboard a Stuart Cove Dive vessel ready to shoot another day of what will be the July 13 episode of Shark Week.
1st insert: Kareem Bethell, one of several Bahamian divers, stars in Shark Week July 13 on the Discovery Channel.
2nd insert: Ready, set, almost – A quiet moment in Coral Harbour in New Providence, Bahamas, waiting for action to start are front row David Harris and Dr. Austin Gallagher, Beneath the Waves and back row Diane Phillips, writer, and businessman Mario Carey who turned a passion for diving into a plea to save marine resources of The Bahamas and is raising funds to help monitor the waters.
3rd insert: Top Bahamian dive expert Andre Musgrove directs film crew including marine scientist Dr. Austin Gallagher and Dr. Erica Staaterman, a marine bioacoustics expert with the Department of Interior, as they prepare for the second dive of the day filming the Shark Week episode The Science of Sound. Shark Week runs July 11-18 on the Discovery Channel with the episode shot in The Bahamas set to air on the 13th
PM: Project delivers on promise and invests in youth, sports and national development
GRAND BAHAMA, The Bahamas — Calling it the fulfillment of a major commitment to the island, Prime Minister Philip Davis led the official groundbreaking for the Grand Bahama Aquatic Centre, a facility the government says will transform sports development and create new opportunities for young athletes.
Speaking at the Grand Bahama Sports Complex on February 12, the Prime Minister said the project represents more than bricks and mortar
— it is an investment in people, national pride and long-term economic activity. The planned complex will feature a modern 50-metre competition pool, designed to meet international standards for training and regional and global swim meets. Davis said the facility will give Bahamian swimmers a home capable of producing world-class performance while also providing a space for community recreation, learn-to-swim programmes and water safety training.
He noted that Grand Bahama has long produced outstanding athletes despite limited infrastructure and said the new centre is intended to correct that imbalance, positioning the island as a hub for aquatic sports and sports tourism.
The Prime Minister also linked the development to the broader national recovery and revitalisation of Grand Bahama, describing the project as part of a strategy to expand opportunities for young people, create jobs during construction and stimulate activity for small businesses once operational.
The Aquatic Centre, he said, stands as proof that promises made to Grand Bahama are being delivered.
The project is expected to support athlete development, attract competitions, and provide a safe, modern environment for residents to access swimming and water-based programmes for generations to come.
Angle by Deandrea Hamilton. Built with ChatGPT (AI). Magnetic Media — CAPTURING LIFE.
The Bahamas, February 15, 2026 – For the better part of three years, Bahamians have been told that major Afreximbank financing would help transform access to capital, rebuild infrastructure and unlock economic growth across the islands. The headline figures are large. The signing ceremonies are high profile. The language is ambitious. What remains far harder to see is the measurable impact in the daily lives of the people those announcements are meant to serve.
The Government’s push to secure up to $100 million from Afreximbank for roughly 200 miles of Family Island roads dates back to 2025. In
its February 11 disclosure, the bank outlined a receivables-discounting facility — a structure that allows a contractor to be paid early once work is completed, certified and invoiced, with the Government settling the bill later. It is not cash placed into the economy upfront. It does not, by itself, build a single mile of road. Every dollar depends on work first being delivered and approved.
The wider framework has been described as support for “climate-resilient and trade-enhancing infrastructure,” a phrase that, in practical terms, should mean projects that lower the cost of doing business, move people and goods faster, and keep the economy functioning. But for communities, that promise becomes real only when the projects are named, the standards are defined and a clear timeline is given for when work will begin — and when it will be finished.
Bahamians have seen this moment before.
In 2023, a $30 million Afreximbank facility for the Bahamas Development Bank was hailed as a breakthrough that would expand access to financing for local enterprise. It worked in one immediate and measurable way: it encouraged businesses to apply. Established, revenue-generating Bahamian companies responded to the call, prepared plans, and entered a process they believed had been capitalised to support growth. The unanswered question is how much of that capital has reached the private sector in a form that allowed those businesses to expand, hire and generate new economic activity.
Because development is not measured in the size of announcements.
It is measured in loans disbursed, projects completed and businesses expanded.
The pattern is becoming difficult to ignore. In June 2024, when Afreximbank held its inaugural Caribbean Annual Meetings in Nassau,
Grand Bahama was presented as the future home of an Afro-Caribbean marketplace said to carry tens of millions of dollars in investment. What was confirmed at that stage was a $1.86 million project-preparation facility — funding for studies and planning to make the development bankable, not construction financing. The larger build-out remains dependent on additional approvals, land acquisition and further capital.
This distinction — between financing announced and financing that produces visible, measurable outcomes — is now at the centre of the national conversation.
Because while the numbers grow larger on paper, entrepreneurs still describe access to capital as out of reach, and communities across the Family Islands are still waiting to see where the work will start.
And in an economy where stalled growth translates into lost opportunity, rising frustration and real social consequences, the gap between promise and delivery is no longer a communications issue.
It is an inability to convert announcements into outcomes.
Angle by Deandrea Hamilton. Built with ChatGPT (AI). Magnetic Media — CAPTURING LIFE.
A hardline strategy that reduced murders, gunfire, and collateral deaths
The Bahamas, February 8, 2026 – What happens when police stop routinely granting bail to high-risk suspects and aggressively execute outstanding warrants? In The Bahamas, the answer in 2025 was fewer murders, fewer gunshots, and safer communities.
The Royal Bahamas Police Force arrested 4,337 individuals on outstanding warrants last year, ensuring suspects were brought directly before the courts instead of being released back onto the streets. At the same time, police significantly curtailed the use of police bail for high-risk and repeat offenders, particularly those already entangled in violent disputes.
Police Commissioner Shanta Knowles said the shift was informed by hard lessons from previous years. Intelligence reviews showed that
many homicide victims were not random targets, but men already wanted by law enforcement and — critically — by other criminals. When released on bail, those individuals often became targets themselves, triggering retaliatory shootings that spilled into neighbourhoods, roadways and public spaces.
By keeping high-risk suspects in custody pending court appearances, police say they disrupted that cycle — removing both potential offenders and potential victims from the streets.
The impact was stark. Murders declined by 31 percent in 2025, falling from 120 in 2024 to 83, the largest percentage decrease in homicides since national tracking began in 1963 and the lowest murder count in nearly two decades.
Police leaders say the strategy also reduced the collateral damage that had increasingly alarmed communities. Innocent residents had been caught in “sprays of gunfire” as targeted attacks unfolded in residential areas, at traffic stops, and in public settings.
Gun-violence indicators reflected the change. Gunshot reports fell by 35 percent, while incidents detected by ShotSpotter technology declined by 29 percent, confirming that fewer shots were being fired across the country.
“Gunshots ringing out and cutting through our peaceful paradise were down remarkably,” Commissioner Knowles said, attributing the improvement to decisive enforcement, tighter bail practices, and sustained pressure on offenders.
Police also intensified enforcement against breach of bail conditions, charging and detaining more suspects than in any previous reporting period. Officers say the approach removed the opportunity for repeat offending while matters were before the courts.
Police leadership said the results go beyond statistics. By limiting bail for high-risk suspects and executing warrants at scale, the strategy saved lives, protected bystanders, and restored confidence in public safety.
In 2025, fewer people were hunted, fewer bullets were fired, and fewer families were left grieving — a shift police say was no accident, but the result of deliberate, hardline choices.
Angle by Deandrea Hamilton. Built with ChatGPT (AI). Magnetic Media — CAPTURING LIFE.
