It is one of a group of islands lying in a shallow lagoon called the Bight of Acklins, of which the largest are Crooked Island in the north and Acklins in the south-east, and the smaller are Long Cay (once known as Fortune Island) in the north-west, and Castle Island in the south.
The islands were settled by American Loyalists in the late 1780's who set cottonplantations employing over 1,000 slaves. After the abolition of slavery in the British Empire these became uneconomical, and the replacement income from sponge diving has now dwindled as well. The inhabitants now live by fishing and small-scale farming.
The main town in the group is Colonel Hill on Crooked Island. Albert Town, on Long Cay, now sparsely populated, was once a prosperous little town. It was engaged in the sponge and salt industries and also served as a transfer port for stevedores seeking work on passing ships.
The population of Acklins was 428, and Crooked Island 350, at the 2000 census.
It is believed that first Post Office in the Bahamas was at Pitt’s Town on Crooked Island.
It appears NOT to be official usage to refer to if as Acklins Island.
The Acklins iguana can be distinguished from the San Salvador and White Cay iguanas by a combination of several scale features, including four rows of scales between prefrontals and frontals, three rows of loreals, and eight supercilliaries (Schwartz and Carey 1977).
As in San Salvador iguanas, the caudal verticils in Acklins iguanas are not as enlarged as in White Cay iguanas and the enlarged postsacral scales form a shorter row.
They visited the Acklins Bight in 1996, as well as the introduced population, in order to obtain blood samples and measurements from the iguanas and to evaluate their status.
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