Karen E. McReynolds

On Isla Coiba: the tropics

I was privileged to be part of an exploratory research project this summer that occurred on Panama’s Isla Coiba.  This is the largest island in Pacific Central America, containing about 193 square miles.  (For comparison, Southern California’s popular Catalina Island covers only 74 square miles.) For eighty-five years, Coiba was a prison island much like Alcatraz.  The people who were there did not want to be there, whether they were prisoners or staff, and the sour reputation of the place kept other visitors away.  This resulted in Coiba becoming a significant home for wildlife.  Although there was some abuse of resources carried on by the people who were present – coerced nest robbing, for example, by prisoners who were forced to climb hundred-foot trees to obtain parrot nestlings for guards to sell for personal gain  – the island is large and not easily accessible, permitting wildlife to be mostly overlooked and ignored.   Scarlet Macaws (Ara macao) no longer exist in mainland Panama, but there are healthy populations on Coiba.  These are the birds we were there to learn more about.

After a six hour redeye flight to Panama City and an unexpectedly lengthy stay at the office of STRI, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, to confirm research permits and island visitation authorizations, we boarded a bus for the four hour ride to Santiago.  From there it took another couple of hours to reach the trending surf town of Santa Catalina.  This was our departure point for Isla Coiba.  We would arrive on the island after a ninety-minute voyage aboard a small panga, a modest, open, outboard-powered boat owned by a trustworthy local captain named Feliciano.  Joining us on board were Javier, our guide; Melvin, Feliciano’s son and assistant; and Viviana, our cook for the duration of our time on the island.  She was also Feliciano’s daughter.  The family had a good thing going there.

It was the very start of the rainy season, when the afternoon clouds were uncertain about their daily growth spurt and still occasionally neglected to convene and conspire to drench us. The green of the tropics, so vivid to anyone from parched California, owes its existence to that cloudy conspiracy but remains brilliant whether the rain falls or not. This vibrant green that is present everywhere you look offered the strongest impression to me about the island.  When I think back on my time there, I think green.  And damp.

When we prepare to visit someplace new we often look up photographs, videos, even movies that feature that place. It seems like a good idea to do our best to understand it as well as we can before we experience it in person.  It is indeed a good idea, I suppose, but visual images fall so far short.  Maybe they are better than nothing, but perhaps not much. Photographic images offer only one thing – a picture – and apply to only one of our senses – vision.  The reality of a place is the sum of its sensual offerings, and that goes far beyond merely what we can see.  I once heard a missionary comment that no news camera’s film images can convey the harshness of a riot, because the acrid smell of burning tires cannot be recorded by a camera.  In the same way, no photograph of Coiba’s lush green hills can signal the humidity of the air that is present.  It fills every pore with moisture and produces that constant trickle of sweat that the visitor or resident alike learns to live with.  Amazingly, the visitor who slowly becomes a resident does get acclimated; the humidity does become easier to cope with.  My previous experience in the tropics taught me this.  The far more brief experience of Isla Coiba that I had early this summer was by no means long enough for that acclimatization to even begin.  It was just green, vibrant, full of life, and full of moisture.

Related reading: 

Notes from Ms. Frizzle (Reflection on life, nature and death)

More Notes from Ms. Frizzle (Reflection on Nat. Science Teachers Association conference)

Notes from Ms. Frizzle (Zacchaeus and the Monkey Swing Tree)

Notes from Ms. Frizzle (Close Encounter with a Bimac)