Reef Geology and Biology of Navassa Island

Navassa is a small oceanic island (5.2 km² in size) located ~30 km west of the southwest tip of Haiti, 160 km south of the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in the heart of the Windward Passage. Navassa was claimed in 1856 by the United States. Navassa has also been claimed by Haiti since its independence in 1825 and, prior to that, was considered part of colonial Haitian territory. The current Haitian constitution (1987) claims Navassa by name as Haitian territory (Wiener 2005). This disputed sovereignty is a basis of much resource management challenge.

From the earliest geological investigations of Navassa (Leibig 1864; Gaussoin 1865) Navassa was recognized to be a carbonate island with abundant fossil corals and a thin cap of oolitic mineral phosphate. Although not guano, the phosphaterich surficial deposits were mined and shipped to Baltimore to be converted to phosphoric acid and used to make fertilizer. Skaggs (1994) provides both a fascinating and disturbing historical account of 30 years of harsh phosphate mining on Navassa after the US Civil War.