Otoque and Bona Islands, Panama
Today we anchored in the Otoque and Bona Islands where we awoke with many seabirds around: brown booby, blue-footed booby, brown pelican, and magnificent frigatebird. Those seabirds breed in large colonies on these islands (where there are no mammalian predators). Some of the birds breed on the cliffs and some on top of the trees of the islands. The birds are nesting and feeding around the islands, because they have abundant food in the surrounding waters. This high productivity is due to the up-welling that is a natural phenomenon which happens here in the Panama Gulf. The up-welling causes the nutrients from the bottom to come up to the surface where light can penetrate and photosynthesis occurs.
Blue-footed Boobies (Sula nebouxii) usually do not range far out to sea and are most numerous around small offshore islands where they sometimes feed quite close to shore. Like many of the seabirds in the tropics they feed on fish, but also eat squids, and have developed a variety of ways to catch them, but mostly they plunge-dive from the air or surface. Females lay 1 or 2 eggs, which are incubated for about 45 days but usually a single chick survives to fledging age (one chick often pecks the other to death). The term booby apparently arose because the nesting and roosting birds seemed so bold and fearless toward people, which was considered stupid. Actually, the fact that these birds breed on isolated islands and cliffs meant that they had few natural predators, so had never developed fear responses to large mammals, such as people. After lunch we moved from the islands and cruised toward Coiba and Granito de Oro Islands. As the sunset we started to change course, passing around Punta Mala or “bad point” on the way out to the Gulf Of Panama.
Early in the evening we had recap, which everyone enjoyed as there was a friendly “heated” discussion between Carlos and Fico. The natural history and behavior of pelicans and frigatebirds provided a competition about which of these birds did people like the most. We continued through the night toward Coiba and Granito de Oro Islands.
Today we anchored in the Otoque and Bona Islands where we awoke with many seabirds around: brown booby, blue-footed booby, brown pelican, and magnificent frigatebird. Those seabirds breed in large colonies on these islands (where there are no mammalian predators). Some of the birds breed on the cliffs and some on top of the trees of the islands. The birds are nesting and feeding around the islands, because they have abundant food in the surrounding waters. This high productivity is due to the up-welling that is a natural phenomenon which happens here in the Panama Gulf. The up-welling causes the nutrients from the bottom to come up to the surface where light can penetrate and photosynthesis occurs.
Blue-footed Boobies (Sula nebouxii) usually do not range far out to sea and are most numerous around small offshore islands where they sometimes feed quite close to shore. Like many of the seabirds in the tropics they feed on fish, but also eat squids, and have developed a variety of ways to catch them, but mostly they plunge-dive from the air or surface. Females lay 1 or 2 eggs, which are incubated for about 45 days but usually a single chick survives to fledging age (one chick often pecks the other to death). The term booby apparently arose because the nesting and roosting birds seemed so bold and fearless toward people, which was considered stupid. Actually, the fact that these birds breed on isolated islands and cliffs meant that they had few natural predators, so had never developed fear responses to large mammals, such as people. After lunch we moved from the islands and cruised toward Coiba and Granito de Oro Islands. As the sunset we started to change course, passing around Punta Mala or “bad point” on the way out to the Gulf Of Panama.
Early in the evening we had recap, which everyone enjoyed as there was a friendly “heated” discussion between Carlos and Fico. The natural history and behavior of pelicans and frigatebirds provided a competition about which of these birds did people like the most. We continued through the night toward Coiba and Granito de Oro Islands.