In recent years, the local economy has turned to tourism to a significant extent, with the natural beauty, mining history and shipwrecks being the main draws.

The heavy rocks of Bell Island were historically mined on a limited scale, but only for use as ship ballast or for the manufacture of killicks, a Newfoundland-type anchor made of wood and stone.

[27][n 3] The mining site was the easternmost in North America and was therefore given the name "Wabana", a combination of two terms from the native Abenaki language which should mean "place of the first light".

[26] In the decade before World War I, Germany had surpassed Canada for the first time as the largest buyer of iron ore.[32] The total annual amount mined was already around 1 million tons.

The German rearmament in the late 1930s, including the construction of tanks, aircraft and submarines,[62] was a positive factor that meant a way out of the crisis for Bell Island (because of the accompanying demand for iron).

[73] As had been feared years earlier, hostile Nazi Germany also effectively launched attacks on the Bell Island mining industry during World War II.

[69] Around noon the submarine fired torpedoes heading for two fully loaded cargo ships: the Canadian Lord Strathcona and the British Saganaga.

In the middle of the night, at about half past three, U-518 led by Friedrich Wissmann[77] fired a torpedo towards the Greek coal transporting freighter Anna T. However, the projectile missed its target and struck the Scotia-cargo pier, which was severely damaged.

The importance attached to the missions is clear from the fact that in the second attack they specifically sought out some crew members who were already familiar with the waters of Conception Bay via cargo ships.

[58][n 12] As early as the end of the 1950s, however, the mines encountered increasing problems due to the presence of new competitors on the market who could produce cheaper and, moreover, often delivered ore with fewer impurities.

In addition, the ore faced more difficulties in marketing, partly because of its high phosphorus content, which made it incompatible with the latest steelmaking technologies.

[96] According to estimates based on, among other things, aeromagnetic research of the enormous non- explored undersea section, however, at least 2 billion tons of theoretically minable ore has remained untouched.

This was part of the Provincial Resettlement Policy which sought to move people away from small, economically weak regions that were expensive to provide basic infrastructure.

Its proximity and fairly easy accessibility to the capital is one of the main reasons why the island still has a relatively high population and has not become one of Newfoundland's numerous ghost towns.

The tap water in some parts of Wabana takes on a yellow, brown or even black colour at times, often contains silt and leaves stains on clothing, tableware and in bathtubs.

[126] In the summer of 2019, divers from the Royal Canadian Navy undertook a salvage operation to retrieve unexploded explosives from the WWII shipwrecks off the coast of Bell Island.

Member of the House of Assembly David Brazil also pointed out that many residents leave early in the morning by ferry to St. John's and return late at night, making it more difficult for them to present themselves at a vaccination centre than elsewhere.

[132] After a charm offensive and accompanying Facebook campaign in the style of the movie The Grand Seduction, residents convinced one of the departed doctors to come back to the island in March 2022 (albeit on a contract of only 11 weeks).

[149] Bell Island can be characterized geologically as a huge boulder consisting of sandstone and shale rock that towers dozens of meters above the waters of Conception Bay, like a table mountain.

[142][12] The island is therefore an anomaly within the geological context of the Avalon Peninsula, whose soil consists almost exclusively of granite and shale rock and contains no sandstone.

[150][n 14] The rock of the Bell Island Group consists of red-brown to glimmer-like gray sandstone and siltstone in which beds of oolitic hematite are embedded.

[151] The overlying Wabana Group consists of black shale and sandstone with layers of phosphate containing pebbles, oolitic hematite and pyrite.

This concerns matters such as the street lighting, the snow removal of local roads, the garbage collection service and maintenance and repairs to the sewers and to the waterworks.

[78] The street plan of the main settlement Wabana somewhat resembles a maze and thus is diametrically opposed to the villages built almost entirely along the coastline that are typical of Newfoundland.

[26][23] For several families, a vegetable garden and wild berry picking has traditionally been an additional source of income, albeit to a much lesser extent than in the mid-20th century.

[212] Tourist attractions on the Bell Island coast includes rock formations that can be visited on foot or boat trips, several beaches, a large part of them only accessible from the sea, and snorkelling and kayaking.

However, the war has been for the largest part beneficial to diving tourism, as four ships sunken by U-boats are located relatively close to the island's shores.

[229][230] An organized walk through the many ghost stories takes place on Friday and Saturday evenings in the summer with an accompanying stage performance at a mine shaft.

[235] This was also the conclusion of two scientists at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory who detected "superbolts" using data from the Vela satellites and therefore conducted an on-site investigation shortly after the incident.

[235] However, some people did not believe these theories and all kinds of speculation arose, ranging from a failed secret test by the US or the Soviets, possibly from an EMP weapon or a weather modification attempt, up to and including alien UFOs.