A fintastic Bahamas trip: Our take on Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters
Looking for sublime beaches, cinematic scenery and close encounters with sharks? Try the Bahamas…
Ed Grenby - 9 July 2025
ITV Plc/Plimsoll Productions
Lenny Henry is a coward. Helen George is chicken. And God knows what Rachel Riley, Lucy Punch and the rest of the participants on ITV1’s Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters are making such a big wet fuss about. Because just like those stars of ITV1’s bonkers new celebs-in-jeopardy show, I’m currently up to my waist in warm Bahamian waters with a bunch of sharks – and I find there’s absolutely nothing to be afraid of.
To be fair, mine are harmless little nurse sharks, barely a foot long, while Sir Len and his lightweight mates are dealing with decidedly deadlier hammerheads and tiger sharks… but still. Swimming with the sharp-finned predators – not to mention turtles, stingrays and even pigs – can be a surprisingly serene addition to what is inevitably already an extremely relaxing holiday in the Bahamas.
The island nation stretches in a graceful swoosh of little green- and apricot-coloured swathes of land, up from Inagua (just north-east of Cuba) to Bimini (50 miles east of Miami). The latter is where ITV’s show is being filmed, but most visitors hit Nassau, the country’s capital, before spending a few days on one of the Family Islands, as the rest of the archipelago is charm[1]ingly known. (You’ll want to be in Nassau over the weekend for the Fish Fry at Arawak Cay, a rum-beer-seafood-and-dance party that truly brings locals and tourists together in slightly sozzled harmony.)
At the airport for my flight from Nassau to Great Exuma – basically a bus with wings, as it stopped to pick up and set down passengers at any number of islets en route – I was thrilled by the piratical ring to the names on the domestic departures board: flights were leaving for Black Point, North Eleuthera, Mangrove Cay and even Deadman’s Cay.
Real-life buccaneers loved the Bahamas for its shallow sandbanks and reefs, onto which they could drive or lure ships, but it’s been just as popular with the Hollywood version. The Pirates of the Caribbean movies were filmed here, and an appropriately raffish beach bar and grill called Santana’s, just down the road from my Exuma hotel, was pretty much a second home for Johnny Depp and his scurvy crew. A mile up the beach, Tropic Breeze is even better, with lobster poppers that have to be eaten – multiple times, I greedily insist – to be believed. (The lobsters are caught by the chef’s uncle just a few miles from the grill itself.)
Another couple of miles along, on the coast of Little Exuma, is Tropic of Cancer Beach, and the softest sand I’ve ever wiggled a toe in. There’s not a single person or thing visible but for a few empty cays, scatter-sown across the horizon, and the exquisite aquamarine waters of the sea they sit in. And this is merely an average beach for the Bahamas, where several of the islands come with peachy-pink sand, but every seascape glows fluorescent turquoise. (Think I’m getting carried away? Ask an astronaut – numerous space-farers have commented that, seen from up there, the Bahamas is the most beautiful bit of planet Earth. Have a look at the area on Google Maps’ satellite view for an idea of why.)
No surprise, then, that Pirates isn’t the only film franchise in town. The Bahamas has back-dropped multiple Bonds, from 1965’s Thunderball to 2006’s Casino Royale – but by some distance the stand-out location (used in both Thunderball and 1983’s Never Say Never Again) is Thunderball Grotto, an enclosed sea cave with holes in the roof that let in shafts of sun to light it up like neon at the right time. Hidden by the sea, it’s pretty much only accessible by holding your breath and swimming through an under-water tunnel, as if you’re 007 himself.
The grotto is usually a stop on a day-trip tour, from Nassau or any hotel hotspot, that might also include time at Hooper’s Bay Beach for turtles (cute), Bitter Guana Cay for iguanas (prehistoric-looking), Stocking Island for stingrays (used to being fed, they waffle up to your hands with their soft undersides; it feels like you’re being kissed by a blancmange) – and, at Compass Cay, those nurse sharks. They, too, are surprisingly soft and smooth underneath, with little whiffly, floppy, jowly “whiskers” on the sides of their mouths to help them detect food and, crucially, make them look almost entirely unthreatening.
Indeed, I’m actually more unnerved by the inhabitants of Big Major Cay – the Bahamas’ famous swimming pigs. It’s not just that they are paddling porkers, but, whether through natural instinct or habituation, they snuffle fairly determinedly around you for food. True, no one ever suggested making Trotters instead of Jaws, but as a big one bounds over to me in the shallows and knocks me clean off my feet in its search for any comestibles, I do wonder if ITV might consider a sequel to their new show. Pig! Celebrity Infested Waters, anyone?
ITV Plc/Plimsoll Productions
Lenny Henry is a coward. Helen George is chicken. And God knows what Rachel Riley, Lucy Punch and the rest of the participants on ITV1’s Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters are making such a big wet fuss about. Because just like those stars of ITV1’s bonkers new celebs-in-jeopardy show, I’m currently up to my waist in warm Bahamian waters with a bunch of sharks – and I find there’s absolutely nothing to be afraid of.
To be fair, mine are harmless little nurse sharks, barely a foot long, while Sir Len and his lightweight mates are dealing with decidedly deadlier hammerheads and tiger sharks… but still. Swimming with the sharp-finned predators – not to mention turtles, stingrays and even pigs – can be a surprisingly serene addition to what is inevitably already an extremely relaxing holiday in the Bahamas.
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The island nation stretches in a graceful swoosh of little green- and apricot-coloured swathes of land, up from Inagua (just north-east of Cuba) to Bimini (50 miles east of Miami). The latter is where ITV’s show is being filmed, but most visitors hit Nassau, the country’s capital, before spending a few days on one of the Family Islands, as the rest of the archipelago is charm[1]ingly known. (You’ll want to be in Nassau over the weekend for the Fish Fry at Arawak Cay, a rum-beer-seafood-and-dance party that truly brings locals and tourists together in slightly sozzled harmony.)
At the airport for my flight from Nassau to Great Exuma – basically a bus with wings, as it stopped to pick up and set down passengers at any number of islets en route – I was thrilled by the piratical ring to the names on the domestic departures board: flights were leaving for Black Point, North Eleuthera, Mangrove Cay and even Deadman’s Cay.
Real-life buccaneers loved the Bahamas for its shallow sandbanks and reefs, onto which they could drive or lure ships, but it’s been just as popular with the Hollywood version. The Pirates of the Caribbean movies were filmed here, and an appropriately raffish beach bar and grill called Santana’s, just down the road from my Exuma hotel, was pretty much a second home for Johnny Depp and his scurvy crew. A mile up the beach, Tropic Breeze is even better, with lobster poppers that have to be eaten – multiple times, I greedily insist – to be believed. (The lobsters are caught by the chef’s uncle just a few miles from the grill itself.)
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Another couple of miles along, on the coast of Little Exuma, is Tropic of Cancer Beach, and the softest sand I’ve ever wiggled a toe in. There’s not a single person or thing visible but for a few empty cays, scatter-sown across the horizon, and the exquisite aquamarine waters of the sea they sit in. And this is merely an average beach for the Bahamas, where several of the islands come with peachy-pink sand, but every seascape glows fluorescent turquoise. (Think I’m getting carried away? Ask an astronaut – numerous space-farers have commented that, seen from up there, the Bahamas is the most beautiful bit of planet Earth. Have a look at the area on Google Maps’ satellite view for an idea of why.)
No surprise, then, that Pirates isn’t the only film franchise in town. The Bahamas has back-dropped multiple Bonds, from 1965’s Thunderball to 2006’s Casino Royale – but by some distance the stand-out location (used in both Thunderball and 1983’s Never Say Never Again) is Thunderball Grotto, an enclosed sea cave with holes in the roof that let in shafts of sun to light it up like neon at the right time. Hidden by the sea, it’s pretty much only accessible by holding your breath and swimming through an under-water tunnel, as if you’re 007 himself.
The grotto is usually a stop on a day-trip tour, from Nassau or any hotel hotspot, that might also include time at Hooper’s Bay Beach for turtles (cute), Bitter Guana Cay for iguanas (prehistoric-looking), Stocking Island for stingrays (used to being fed, they waffle up to your hands with their soft undersides; it feels like you’re being kissed by a blancmange) – and, at Compass Cay, those nurse sharks. They, too, are surprisingly soft and smooth underneath, with little whiffly, floppy, jowly “whiskers” on the sides of their mouths to help them detect food and, crucially, make them look almost entirely unthreatening.
Indeed, I’m actually more unnerved by the inhabitants of Big Major Cay – the Bahamas’ famous swimming pigs. It’s not just that they are paddling porkers, but, whether through natural instinct or habituation, they snuffle fairly determinedly around you for food. True, no one ever suggested making Trotters instead of Jaws, but as a big one bounds over to me in the shallows and knocks me clean off my feet in its search for any comestibles, I do wonder if ITV might consider a sequel to their new show. Pig! Celebrity Infested Waters, anyone?
Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters, Monday 9.00pm ITV1