Nassau and Freeport on New Providence Island are the primary ports of call in the Bahamas. In 2004, Nassau was the sixth most visited port in the world and Freeport was the sixteenth (Wild and Dearing, 2004a). The name Bahamas is a derivation of the Spanish "Baha Mar," or shallow sea, and there are approximately 700 islands in this popular self-styled "paradise archipelago" of sun, sea and sand, paradise archipelago.