The U.S. Embassy in Nassau has issued its second safety alert in just over a year warning American tourists to avoid renting jet skis in The Bahamas — this time broadening the advisory beyond crime to indict the rental industry’s regulatory framework as a whole.
The June 15 alert, accompanied by a video public service announcement from Ambassador Herschel Walker, cites a documented pattern of fatalities, serious injuries, and sexual assaults linked to unlicensed and uninsured operators working Nassau’s most popular beaches. “We’ve lost an American life to a preventable accident,” Walker said in the video. “Too many of our visitors have been hospitalized with serious injuries.”
The embassy’s first warning, issued in April 2025, was narrowly focused on a series of sexual assaults by jet ski operators who solicited tourists on beaches near downtown Nassau and Paradise Island before taking victims to isolated islands near New Providence. The new alert folds those incidents into a wider indictment: since August 2024, six U.S. citizens have been hospitalized in jet ski accidents in The Bahamas, three of whom required emergency medical evacuation to the United States. In August 2025, Alaska Air National Guard 2nd Lt. Robert Rosa was killed off Paradise Island when an unlicensed operator driving an unregistered boat struck his watercraft during a Nassau vacation.
Sexual assault reports have continued to accumulate. The embassy recorded three in 2024, two in 2025, and two more already in 2026. Victims reported being solicited for rides on Junkanoo Beach, Saunders Beach, and Cabbage Beach before operators took them to isolated locations.
The alert identifies “rogue operators” — unlicensed, uninsured, and operating unsafe watercraft — as the core problem, and notes that oversight of even designated rental areas is “sporadic at best.” U.S. government employees stationed in The Bahamas are already prohibited from renting or riding jet skis on New Providence and Paradise Island, a restriction the embassy is now extending as a formal advisory to American tourists at large.
Walker did not stop at the warning. He directly called out the Bahamian government’s Jet Ski Task Force, established in 2025, for going dormant. “A task force that does not meet cannot protect lives,” he said, calling on the government to activate it, enforce existing regulations, and bring accountability to the industry.
The task force convened the following morning.
Robert Sands, Baha Mar’s senior vice-president and a Task Force member, confirmed to Nassau’s Tribune Business that the group met on June 16 — one day after Walker’s public call to action. Sands acknowledged the effort had “gone somewhat silent in the last two to three months,” but struck a conciliatory note, saying the embassy’s concerns and the Bahamian tourism industry’s goals are aligned. “I certainly don’t take this as an attack on Bahamian tourism,” Sands said. “It’s certainly a recognition of concerns brought to our attention, and we need to be a bit more timely in how we address it.” He also pointed to the challenge of enforcement in a nation whose geography — multiple beaches and isolated cays — creates persistent opportunities for unscrupulous operators to resurface after crackdowns elsewhere.
Not everyone received the warning without objection. John Rosen, a South Florida operator who owns Jet Ski Fort Lauderdale, traveled to Cabbage Beach to speak with Tribune Business in defense of Bahamian operators. Rosen argued the embassy overstated the risk, estimating between 250,000 and 500,000 rentals over the three-year period in question and contending the incident rate amounts to a fraction of a fraction of total activity. He also noted that the Bahamian government recently prohibited operators from riding on the same watercraft as renters — a direct response to the assault pattern. The embassy’s warning, Rosen said, risks damaging legitimate operators who have done nothing wrong.
Whether his math moves American tourists is another question. The warning has received wide pickup in U.S. mainstream media at the height of peak travel season.
The Bahamas remains at a Level 2 travel advisory — “Exercise Increased Caution” — from the U.S. State Department, a designation unchanged by the new alert. The embassy is not advising Americans to avoid The Bahamas. It is advising them not to get on a jet ski while they’re there.
