Is Saint Martin's 3 km² or 8 km²? Do 3,700 or 10,000 people live there? What each source says, and why they don't agree.
Look up the size of Saint Martin's Island and you'll find 3 km², 8 km² and more. Look up its population and you'll find anything from 3,700 to 10,000. Here's what each source says and why they differ, from El Marena Eco Resort at the island's southern end.
How big is it?
- About 8 km²: the figure most Bangladeshi sources use, including Prothom Alo (March 2025) and the Bangla Wikipedia page on Saint Martin union (1,977 acres).
- About 3 km²: the figure in the English Wikipedia infobox, with no source given.
- About 5 km² at high tide: English Wikipedia also says the island shrinks to about this when the tide is in, again without a source.
- Length and width: about 7.3 km long, from about 500 m wide in the middle to about 1.4 km in the north (Banglapedia). Banglapedia gives no total area.
Why the numbers don't agree
Much of the shore is rock and coral that is under water at high tide and dry at low tide: that's how you can walk to Chera Dip when the tide is out. So a measurement that counts that rocky belt, or the islets of Chera Dip, gives a bigger total than one that counts only the land above high tide.
Some figures are also old and get copied from site to site without a source. For a school answer, use the figure your textbook gives; otherwise, about 8 km² is the common one.
How many people live there?
- 8,492: Saint Martin union in the 2022 census (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, as cited on Bangla Wikipedia).
- About 10,000: an estimate in The Daily Star Bangla (February 2023), confirmed by a Department of Environment official and the union parishad chairman.
- About 3,700, in 535 families: Banglapedia's figure, from an older edition.
So the best current figure is the 2022 census: about 8,500 people. Most of the island's families live from fishing (Banglapedia).
Is it really a coral island?
It's usually called Bangladesh's only coral island, and that's what most websites and textbooks say. But a 2022 study by Professor Mohammad Shah Newaz Chowdhury of Chittagong University and colleagues found the island is mostly sedimentary rock and sand, with some coral reefs. In his words it's a coral-rich rocky island rather than a coral island (Prothom Alo, March 2025).
Either way, the coral is real, and it has declined a lot, which is why the island's rules matter. See coral and island rules.
Seeing it for yourself
In 2026–27 tourist ships sail from Nuniarchhara jetty in Cox's Bazar between 1 November 2026 and 15 March 2027. To find the island on a map, see where St Martin Island is. For school, see the St Martin Island paragraph.
