PORT ELYSIUM
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Access to the Port Elysium portal is restricted to approved partners who have executed a non-disclosure agreement.
Request Access ← Back to Port ElysiumA 50-acre living seawater lagoon, fed from the open Atlantic: about 3 km of new sand beach, calm protected swimming, raised development platforms and a world-class marine research and restoration asset. One of Port Elysium's three defining pillars alongside the Marina and the Championship Golf Course, it is built in stages alongside the property programme.
The lagoon is dug from land, not dredged: excavators work from the shore, and once cut below sea level it fills through the island's limestone. Atlantic water drawn from 5, 10 and 20 metres enters at the far ends and leaves by gravity through outflow canals into the marina.
It averages about 3.5 metres deep, about 5 metres in the centre and shallowing towards the beaches. The water is screened and engine-free: swimming, paddling and rowing only, with electric, speed-limited service craft. Every intake is screened and every outlet barred, so nothing large can get in.
The whole lagoon is exchanged with Atlantic water in four days or less in every season, held to clean reef-water and EU “Excellent” bathing standards. If monitoring shows a breach, the flow is raised.
About 3 km of new sand beach serves homes, apartments and restaurants, on land that was flat, at sea level and without views. Frontage like this is rare on Long Island, whose Atlantic shore is rock with small sandy bays.
Swim from your terrace. Kayak to breakfast. Watch your children snorkel safely steps from the front door. The lagoons transform daily life at Port Elysium into something most island communities can only dream of.
The lagoon is also a world-class living marine laboratory: corals, mangroves and marine life grown in the lagoon itself, in clean Atlantic water under continuous monitoring, as a research and restoration platform designed for collaboration with the University of The Bahamas, the University of Miami and Bahamian coral programmes.
The lagoon itself is the coral nursery: corals grown in clean, monitored Atlantic water, with the Freeport coral farm Coral Vita as the Bahamian precedent.
The lagoon rises and falls with the tide, so mangrove fringes line its natural edges and canals, grown with Bahamian and Florida partners.
The partners Port Elysium will work with include the University of The Bahamas, through its Gerace Research Centre, and the University of Miami Rosenstiel School.
Port Elysium's Long Island Blue Restoration Programme works well beyond the estate boundary. It will assess the island's degraded lagoons and, where the evidence supports it, restore tidal circulation and water quality, regenerate mangroves and protect seagrass, alongside the Government's national Blue Carbon Programme.
Restoration is paid for first by grants, conservation finance, research funding and sponsors. Carbon credits are a possible later income, never the reason for the work, and no carbon volumes are forecast before each site is measured.
The estate's own lagoons play their part, with coral research and nurseries run with research partners.
Calm, clean, screened water held to EU “Excellent” bathing standards, with no engines on the water.
Corals, mangroves and marine life grown in the lagoon itself, in clean Atlantic water under continuous monitoring.
Self-powered craft only across the sheltered lagoon: swim, paddle or row.
About 3 km of sand beach for homes, apartments and restaurants, with the sand from the estate’s own supply.
The lagoon’s own rock raises about 44 hectares around it to +3 m, with no imported fill, and the platforms fall away from the lagoon so land water is kept out.
Lagoon water leaves by gravity through one or two barred outflow canals into the marina basin, adding water exchange for the marina. The canals carry water, not vessels.