Wildlife in the Mahone Bay area includes great blue herons, black guillemots, osprey, Leach's storm petrels, and razorbills.

[8] These drumlins are "elongated hills" which consist of multiple layers of till resting on bedrock and are from different phases of glacial advance that span the past 75,000 years.

Researchers Les MacPhie, and John Wonnacott concluded that the deep deposits at the east end of the Island make up the drumlin formations.

[9] There are two types of bedrock that lie under Oak Island; the southeastern portion consists of "Mississippian Windsor Group limestone" and gypsum, and the northwestern part is Cambro-Ordovician Halifax Formation slate.

[8] Oak Island and the area that is now Mahone Bay was once a lagoon 8,000 years BP, before the sea level rose with the melting glaciers.

[12] The first major group of settlers arrived in the Chester area from Massachusetts in 1761, and Oak Island was officially surveyed and divided into 32 four-acre lots in the following year.

[15] The most recent owners include a treasure hunter named Dan Blankenship, who initially partnered with "Oak Island Tours Inc.," run by David Tobias.

Oak Island Tours eventually dissolved, and in February 2019 it was announced that a new partnership had been formed with a company called the "Michigan Group".

[16] This group consisted of brothers Rick and Marty Lagina, Craig Tester, and Alan Kostrzewa who had been purchasing lots from Tobias.

[22] Areas of interest on the island with regard to treasure hunters include a location known as the "Money Pit", which is allegedly the original searchers’ spot.

According to island lore, it first drew the attention of a local teenager in 1795, who noticed an indentation in the ground and, with some friends, started to dig—only to find a man-made shaft featuring wooden platforms every 10 feet (3.0 m) down to the 90-foot (27 m) level of depth.

In January 2014, the History Channel began airing a reality TV show called The Curse of Oak Island about a group of modern treasure hunters.