Coiba National Park: Discover Panama’s Pacific Marine Life

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Off Panama’s Pacific coast, Coiba National Park protects a remarkable combination of tropical islands and marine habitats. Together with its Special Zone of Marine Protection, it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005.

For divers, the appeal lies beneath the surface. Coiba’s waters provide important habitat for sharks, sea turtles and a wide variety of fish. The area also forms an ecological link within the Eastern Tropical Pacific, helping support marine animals that travel through the region.

Exploring Coiba from Santa Catalina

Santa Catalina is our base for diving in Coiba National Park. At Panama Dive Center, we believe a good dive is about more than spotting wildlife: it’s an opportunity to observe behaviour, understand the environment and become a more thoughtful diver.

Every visit is different. Wildlife encounters are never guaranteed, and that unpredictability is part of exploring a natural environment.

Dive with Care

How we dive matters. Good buoyancy, keeping equipment close to your body and giving animals space help reduce our impact. Avoid touching or chasing marine life, and take time to watch without interrupting.

Coiba offers much to discover—and every diver has a part to play in caring for it.

Planning to dive in Coiba? Contact us to find the right experience for you.

Coiba’s little ones – Part 2

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Spotted sharpnose puffer

Adorning its dark-brown body are countless white dots, which grow to become more numerous in the adults. In fact, the scientific name (Canthigaster punctatissiam) quite literally translates as meaning covered in small spots. They tend to spend much of their day gingerly swimming around, ducking in and out of caves and crevices in their surroundings. They are generally solitary, but occasional form loose groups in which it seems sometimes that they are playfully chasing each other. What I love about them? Apart from their cute appearance with their pointed snout and how they are frantically waving their little fins to propel themselves forward they seem to be quite curious and unafraid. This reaction to a diver while they self just grow to a maximum of 4 inches is quite awe-inspiring.

-by Inga

Coiba’s little ones – Part 1

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Tufted tube blenny

You can spot this little friend at the rocks where it will look out of the mollusk and worm tubes which they inhabit. You will nearly never see one of them outside so it’s hard to imagine that they actually have a quite elongate body with up to 8 cm. They just come out occasionally to nab floating particles of Zooplankton. Normally you can  observe them extending their heads out of the tubes. On one rock you will probably see many of them even if they are solitary living fishs. Well, but who would like to share these little tubes? The reason why they are one of my little favorites is the tuft of densely packed hair like structures between their huge eyes.

by Inga

 

For a trashless ocean

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Plastic

PLASTIC. Plastic. PlAsTiC. PLASTIC. There are lots of stories about plastic going around in the news all the time nowadays, saying how there are mountains of plastic floating around in the ocean. But it’s hard to envision your disposable toothbrush or your food wrappers actually making it to the ocean, right?

 

Here in Santa Catalina, we see that as a reality. Currents bring plastics from all over to our shores. Did you know that 79% of plastic waste we accumulate sticks around in landfills, the ocean, and other terrestrial environments for hundreds of years if not more? That may be hard for us to imagine, but maybe not so much for our marine wildlife.

 

Here, we see the direct impact that the waste we produce has on the marine environment. That can be pretty heavy sometimes, and make you feel a bit helpless.

BUT, we figure that sitting around moping about it probably isn’t going to help. That’s why we do the best we can to try and help out where we can. We start by trying to reduce our actions in forms such as not buying plastic bottles, and instead using reusable bottles. We also try to be proactive where we can, and organise beach cleans, like our recent event on Estero beach.

A huge thank you to all who helped us cleaning and a special thanks to the guys from trashless who supported us also on their website.

Trashless Ocean

With the desire to do more about the pollution problem than just minimizing the own impact, Rosa, founder of trashless created a website to join all the world’s motivated trash pickers together  . On trashless.earth you can connect with like-minded people, find initiatives and events like our beach clean up close to where you are.

The trashmap makes it super easy to find these events and also to read news and find other users close to you.  Share your knowledge, skills and inspirations in rescuing our Planet from all the pollution on the Activity feed. You can create your own Clean ups, invite people and ask for help with the organisation and supporting of your event. Or just looking for some products to reduce your own plastic use? They also have many suggestions and  information for that as well, and you can also add your own zero plastic products.

So if you’ve ever felt hopeless and like you couldn’t do or change anything, this site is what you are looking for. It makes it a lot easier and joyfull to do something about this global problem.

Stay motivated and don’t give up. It’s not to late!-By Inga

My time in Coiba

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Now that my time here as an intern is coming to a close I am reflecting on my experiences and the memories that I will take away. Before coming to Santa Catalina I did not have much diving experience, having dived only to Open Water level in Malaysia. I thought it would be cool to get the chance to do some diving again, but I have to say that my time here has really made me fall in love with experiencing the underwater world and I am desperate to continue!

Every day in Coiba has been special. Even the days when we haven’t had our most spectacular dives you can’t help but be in awe of the park and the diversity of life in the water. And then you get those days that really are extraordinary, when the park is bursting with life and it feels like everywhere you look there is something special to see! My best day of diving happened on our instructor Kat’s birthday when our first two dives were full of big, big schools and turtles, and we shared the last dive with 2 beautiful whale sharks. Since I have been here I have been incredibly lucky enough to see whale sharks, manta rays, giant schools of sting rays and hammerhead sharks among countless other amazing things!

I also, on the encouragement of Sabina, have gotten into making and editing videos from my dives – something I really enjoy doing! This and all the diving experience are skills I am so glad to have gained from my time here.

I am very thankful for the opportunity that PDC has given me to be able to do this, and for all the special people I have shared my time with (particular shout out to my fellow interns / house mates!). PDC it has truly been a pleasure.

Esme

Beach Clean – With A Little Help From Our Friends

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For our regular beach cleans we usually focus on the town beach as it is easily accessible from the shop – and is always in plenty of need! However, having noticed excessive and increasing quantities of plastic and waste on Estero beach (the main surfing beach in Santa Catalina), last weekend we decided to organize a bigger operation to go down there and tidy up.

Our friends Michelle from La Buena Vida (a local hotel) and Ollie (owner of Sup Santa Catalina) agreed to help us to transport people and rubbish to and from the beach, enabling us to facilitate the clean. Michelle also spoke to kids from town who were previously keen to get involved with events like this. We arranged a post-clean feast of empanadas and fruits and we were good to go!

We had a good turnout of kids and adults, but the task ahead of us was mammoth! The thing that struck us was the incredible amount of micro-plastics. It would be a near impossible task to clear all these tiny shreds. However, our team did a great job. We filled 10-15 large bags between us – considering that these were mostly filled with small items / pieces this felt like a job well done.

It was beautiful to see the kids engaged in the task and helping for a long time without getting distracted! Afterwards we had a short discussion about why what we had done was important and it was uplifting to see their understanding of the issues of pollution – especially since this is not the case with many older members of the community.

After the beach clean we had a short yoga session led by Michelle before delving into our empanadas and finally having plenty of time to play / swim together on the beach. One of the nicest things about the day was coming together as a community, having the chance to enjoy the company of others from the town and working together to make our home a better place.

A big thank you to everyone that helped us with all aspects of the clean. We hope to keep bringing the community together in the future and hopefully see an ever-growing team of beach clean heroes!

Sea turtles – our fabled friends

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Sea turtles are probably one of the most well-known and beloved creatures of our vast oceans. Whilst they do breathe air, they can stay under water for around 40 minutes – or even up to several hours while they are asleep. As Reptiles, Turtles lay eggs. The females usually return to the beach where they were born. On the beach, they dig hole in which they lay up to 300 eggs and then cover them up with sand and finally they camouflage them. This is the only protection those eggs will have, the mother returns back to the ocean right after laying her eggs. Those little guys unfortunately have very little chance of making it to adulthood. A lot of them will get eaten or won’t even make it to the ocean safely after hatching. But even if they do, more danger in form of predators awaits in the ocean. Luckily, enough make it so that we can observe them on almost every dive.

They have fascinated humans for several thousand years and appear in mythology and cultural depictions throughout all cultures. Usually, they symbolize wisdom, patience and a certain easy-going way of life as they can live to over a hundred years old with the exact life span depending on the species of sea turtle. In Africa the story goes that turtles are the cleverest of all animals and they gave the other creatures their colours. In Nigeria the turtle is known as a trickster and accomplishes heroic deeds through various different stories. Meanwhile in ancient Greek and Roman mythology the turtle symbolized fertility and was thus an attribute of the goddess Aphrodite/Venus. In Tahitian culture the sea turtle is the shadow of the gods and the lord of the ocean.

Often they are connected with creation myths: There are stories in which the turtle literally carries the world on its back; in some stories that turtle stands on the back of another larger turtle – it is “turtles all the way down”. In other stories our planet is carried by four elephants who stand on the back of a turtle. Unfortunately, in a metaphorical way, turtles really are carrying some of the weight of the world as they are one of the creatures impacted the most by climate change. The reason for this is that the gender of the little sea turtles hatching from their eggs on the beach is determined by the sand temperature. As a result, rising temperatures have led to a too high percentage of female sea turtles, in some areas it is as high as 95%. This makes reproduction even harder, and it is already not easy for our beloved creatures. Sea turtles take decades to reach sexual maturity. When they do return to the beach to lay their eggs the survival rates are unfortunately very low.

Sea turtles are not just the cute, calm creatures we love so much on our dives though – they have a real significance to the ecosystem. For instance, they eat the seagrass, keeping it short enough so it keeps spreading over the ocean floor providing an important habitat for lots of other species who find shelter and food in these grassy beds. They also eat jellyfish. The leatherback turtle is immune to the poison of the box jellyfish and hence controls its population keeping beaches safe for us humans as well.
In Coiba National Park one of the spots where we are most likely to find sea turtles is at the so-called cleaning stations that exist at certain dive sites, like Iglesia. At these cleaning stations fish eat the parasites inhabiting the sea turtles among other bigger animals like rays making it a mutually beneficial institution: they feed on the parasites and the sea turtles and rays get rid of those nasty little plagues. It is fascinating to observe such areas where the animals knowingly go to get cleaned off, and it is what makes Iglesia one of my favorite dive sites.

 

-Text and video by Saskia

Underwater fairytale

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Sometimes, really just sometimes, you get one of those days in Coiba that are like dreams coming true. Last week one of our groups had such a day. The weather was beautiful, which is unusual this time of the year, and the boat ride out to the national park was already stunning.

The first dive site we visited was el Bajo Piñon. Full of life there were lots of schools of fish as well as turtles and our current favourites here – manta rays. It was astonishing to see this dive site bursting with life in all its colours. After a surface interval on one of the little beaches, where the sea shells made a sound like little bells getting tossed against each other in the waves, we headed to our second dive site – Faro. There, the surface current was extremely strong so that it was a struggle to get to the descent line. However, our dive instructor Kim reminded us that strong currents often mean lots of life and she couldn’t have been more right. After the group managed to descend and drift dive for a bit we started hearing very high pitched clicking noises and whistles – coming from hunting dolphins. Not long after we saw a school of bigeye jacks, fish dolphins like to hunt. And finally, they appeared. A group of three dolphins – a big one, a middle one and a baby dolphin- showed up and chased the fish making it look like a game. These creatures seem so intelligent, curious and alert. Every move they make is elegant and playful at the same time. It looked like the bigger dolphins were trying to teach the baby one how to hunt with the baby dolphin always being on the fins of the bigger one. They move incredibly fast in the water and soon enough this group disappeared again. Every now and then over the next couple of minutes we heard a high pitched whistle again until it got louder and more continuous and another pair of dolphins appeared, again shortly after we found a school of bigeye jacks. They hung around for a while longer, showing their teeth and fish inside their mouth making it seem like they were grinning at us letting us know how much fun they were having cruising through the water. It was an absolutely remarkable moment to observe those dolphins hunting and for me it was a childhood dream coming true. We rarely have the luck to see dolphins in Coiba, from the boats we see them quite often but mostly we just hear them on a dive without being lucky enough to spot them.

However, after this encounter our luck was still not used up. Shortly after the dolphins swam off we discovered a whale shark although whale sharks are mostly just observed during dry season here. We followed it and got up close only few meters away from the giant creature with its beautiful painting. Then it turned around and swam towards the group so everyone in the group saw it up close. We then said goodbye to the whaleshark as we had to go up for our safety stop. Without any surprise everyone went nuts once on the surface, talking screaming and laughing in excitement and joy. A lot of the divers had not done a lot of dives yet, but it does not take an experienced diver to realize how extraordinary this day had been. After a lunch break we then did a negative entry to our third and last dive of the day and again we had surprise visitors. A rare black tip reef shark and another manta ray came to say hi and swam past the group. Finally, we made our way back to the dive center with still a blue sky and memories for a life time. Even the instructor said it was one of her best days diving with 1000+ dives all over the world. Thank you Coiba for showing us all your beauty!!

– by Saskia

Manta Rays – Giants of the Sea

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Here in Coiba we just can not get enough of rays hanging out with us on our dives with their movements so elegant it often seems like they are flying through water. Lately we have been particularly lucky and seen Mantas on most of our dives – sometimes just for a brief moment but more often than not they hang around for a bit or appear multiple times throughout a dive with every encounter unique in its own way.

Their colouring in particular on their belly is unique to every individual and allows to identify them.

The name manta originates from the Spanish and Portuguese word “manta” which means blanket or cloak and doesn’t refer to their colouring as one might think but instead to the way they used to be catched. They are mostly found in tropical and subtropical waters making Coiba National Park a perfect place to look for them.

Sometimes you will spot a fish seemingly attached to the manta near its head catching a ride and gaining some extra protection by its giant host. Those fish are called remora or are commonly also referred to as suckerfish as they quite literally suck onto their host. They do not have any negative impact on the ray in doing so, instead this is a special sort of symbiosis and exciting to observe as a diver and sometimes those little guys have been observed to even attach themselves to a diver.

Those giants reaching a fin span of up to nine meters do not just seem curious and smart – their brains are ten times larger than those of whale sharks and studies conducted in 2016 suggest they might even be able to recognize themselves in a mirror, a sign of self-awareness that is usually just observed in dolphins and certain species of monkeys. So, in a lot of ways those little geniuses like to outperform other members of their class with particularly skills in problem solving and communicating.

Some of our divers experienced that first hand when a manta ray entangled in plastic approached them. As the group was just getting ready for the safety stop the manta showed up swimming towards the group seemingly looking for help. After a bit of hesitation and back and forth it slowed down swimming at the same speed as the group as if it was realizing it is getting help now and let the dive instructor cut the plastic line it was entangled in. It stayed for a bit before the group surfaced and then swam away enjoying its freedom once more.

This is encounter adds to the stories that are out there about manta rays and dolphins who found themselves entangled approaching divers for help. It impressively illustrates how smart and communicative these creatures are but once more is a reminder of how important it is to keep our oceans clean and especially avoid plastic and plastic bags.

  • By Saskia, Photocredit: Katie and Kat

Sources: https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/fish/discover/species-profiles/manta-birostris
https://oceana.org/blog/manta-ray-brainpower-blows-other-fish-out-water-10
https://divezone.net/manta-ray

Our plastic ocean

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Rubbish is a big problem here in Santa Catalina. Sadly it is certainly not an exception in Central America, or anywhere else for that matter. Walking down the stunning Santa Catalina coastline you can’t help but notice all the old discarded ‘stuff’ littering the way. Naturally as our home we want to keep the beaches here beautiful, something we can enjoy and be proud of. Here at Panama Dive Centre we are organizing twice monthly beach cleanups to do our part for cleaning up our coastline. However there are much more significant reasons for our beach cleans than simply aesthetic reasons. Littering is a global crisis, but why is it so important to prevent its spread along our coast and beaches?

“An estimated 5-13 million tons of plastic enter our oceans each year from land-based sources” – That’s similar to emptying a garbage truck of plastic into an ocean every minute.

Rubbish is having a devastating effect on marine ecosystems across the world. Approximately 100,000 marine creatures are killed per year just from plastic entanglement – and this is only a figure for those that are found. Ingestion is another matter, over 70% of deep sea fish were found to have ingested plastic in a recent study. We know that plastic takes many years to break down – but even when it does it turns into microplastics and toxic chemicals, which continue to effect the health of marine animals.

“There is more microplastic in the ocean than there are stars in the Milky Way”

This also affects us here on land. For animals that feed on fish (humans included!) not only are waning populations and near extinctions a threat for food security, but we are also ingesting the same toxic chemicals and microplastics harbored by the fish that we eat! Scientists at Ghent University in Belgium estimated that top shellfish eaters in Europe are consuming up to 11,000 pieces of micro plastic in their seafood each year.

“Projections indicate that by 2050, the ration of fish to plastics could be 1:1”

What can we do to end the cycle and help cure our oceans? Every small action counts. It has been estimated that Americans go through about 100 billion plastic bags a year (around 360 bags per person) so just bringing your own bags to the supermarket is a great place to start. Arranging or getting involved in beach cleans like we do here at Panama Dive Center is also a great way to help. Small actions add up! The more people that are willing to make that little extra effort can really make the difference.


For more about rubbish in Santa Catalina and our beach cleaning efforts see the blog of one of our recent participants: www.liveandletgo.org !

-By Esme

Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/19/more-plastic-than-fish-in-the-sea-by-2050-warns-ellen-macarthur

http://naturalsociety.com/un-urges-action-microplastics-ocean-outnumber-stars-1343/

http://www.beachapedia.org/Plastic_Pollution_Facts_and_Figures