Chera Dwip, St. Martin's (ছেঁড়া দ্বীপ, সেন্টমার্টিন)

The islets lie off the far southern end of St. Martin's Island in Teknaf upazila, Cox's Bazar. A thin neck of sand and rock links them to the main island, and that link is often under water at high tide, which explains the Bengali name: chera means torn or split off. Older maps and surveys also use the names Chheradia and Siradia.

St. Martin's was declared an Ecologically Critical Area by the Department of Environment in 1999, and Chera Dwip sits inside the zone that protection was meant to save. Coral cover around the island has fallen sharply since the 1980s as visitor numbers grew. In 2020 the government announced a ban on tourist trips to the islets, and a September 2024 inter-ministry decision repeated that visitors would be kept off. Enforcement has been patchy in practice.

The ground is mostly dark coral boulders and flat stone shelves, with a few coconut palms and small sandy coves. As the tide drops, rock pools open up between the boulders and hold small fish, sea urchins and crabs. Roughly a third of the area floods at high water, so the shape of the place changes several times a day.

Coral surveys around St. Martin's recorded 141 coral species in 1980 and only 41 in 2016. Mangrove shrubs and keya (screw pine) have begun to take hold on the southern side of the main island near Chheradia since boat traffic was cut back. The surrounding sea forms part of a marine protected area of about 1,743 sq km declared under the Wildlife Act.

There is no separate ticket for Chera Dwip. Reaching it depends on getting to St. Martin's first, which runs on a short winter season, a daily visitor cap and advance tickets through the Bangladesh Tourism Board. If the islets are open at all when you visit, go on a morning falling tide, allow two to three hours from the St. Martin's jetty and back, and be off the rocks well before the water turns.

An uninhabited outcrop cut off at high tide

Chera Dwip is a small, uninhabited outcrop joined to St. Martin's at low tide and cut off at high tide. Its only green cover is a patch of bushes and palms, and it lies at the mouth of the Naf River, about 8 kilometres west of the coast of Myanmar. St. Martin's itself is about 120 kilometres by sea from Cox's Bazar city.

Access to St. Martin's has been tightly controlled since 2025, when a nine month restriction on tourist visits began on 1 February. With tensions on the Myanmar border, only the Cox's Bazar to St. Martin's sea route has stayed open, and the Teknaf route used for decades is closed.