Otoque and Bona Islands Gulf of Panama
Wow, what an incredible day we had today.
To start with we had a round of Zodiac cruises and kayaks around the islands known as Otoque and Bona, right in the Gulf of Panama where we saw countless numbers of brown pelicans, brown boobies, blue-footed boobies, black-crowned night herons and magnificent frigatebirds. Some of them were even nesting, like in the case of the frigatebird, with the males showing their fully inflated red gular pouches to court the females.
The reason for the large numbers of birds is because here in the Gulf of Panama we have what is known as a seasonal upwelling. It is one of the strongest in Central America thanks to the trade winds that blow across the isthmus of Panama from the Caribbean to the Pacific. The winds cross the land through openings in the mountains and move the warm water of the surface, which are then replaced with cool water from the bottom of the ocean, rich in nutrients. This in turn supplies the perfect conditions for incredible plankton growth, and the phytoplankton provides food for zooplankton, that becomes food for small fish like sardines, that with time will be the meal of larger fish such as tuna, that later will become food for dolphins and sharks, and so on and so on…
Well, as you can imagine these are very rich waters, rich enough to support the bird life that we saw from the Zodiacs. Fortunately for us however, the water today wasn’t as cool as it usually is, so after the cruises we could all have a swim from the stern of the ship to refresh ourselves, as well as kayak around the small bay near our anchorage. At one point the stern of the Sea Voyager looked like Grand Central Station!
During our afternoon sail southeast, on our way to Coiba Island, we had additional proof of how rich these waters really are when we ran into to a pack of dolphins, and later on during an extraordinary sunset over glassy calm seas, we spotted what seemed to be either a Bryde’s or perhaps a small Sei whale!
Wow, what an incredible day we had today.
To start with we had a round of Zodiac cruises and kayaks around the islands known as Otoque and Bona, right in the Gulf of Panama where we saw countless numbers of brown pelicans, brown boobies, blue-footed boobies, black-crowned night herons and magnificent frigatebirds. Some of them were even nesting, like in the case of the frigatebird, with the males showing their fully inflated red gular pouches to court the females.
The reason for the large numbers of birds is because here in the Gulf of Panama we have what is known as a seasonal upwelling. It is one of the strongest in Central America thanks to the trade winds that blow across the isthmus of Panama from the Caribbean to the Pacific. The winds cross the land through openings in the mountains and move the warm water of the surface, which are then replaced with cool water from the bottom of the ocean, rich in nutrients. This in turn supplies the perfect conditions for incredible plankton growth, and the phytoplankton provides food for zooplankton, that becomes food for small fish like sardines, that with time will be the meal of larger fish such as tuna, that later will become food for dolphins and sharks, and so on and so on…
Well, as you can imagine these are very rich waters, rich enough to support the bird life that we saw from the Zodiacs. Fortunately for us however, the water today wasn’t as cool as it usually is, so after the cruises we could all have a swim from the stern of the ship to refresh ourselves, as well as kayak around the small bay near our anchorage. At one point the stern of the Sea Voyager looked like Grand Central Station!
During our afternoon sail southeast, on our way to Coiba Island, we had additional proof of how rich these waters really are when we ran into to a pack of dolphins, and later on during an extraordinary sunset over glassy calm seas, we spotted what seemed to be either a Bryde’s or perhaps a small Sei whale!
