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Krisa Erdesz
Dr. Hunt
Conservation in Marine Science
30 April 2014
Coco’s Island: National Marine Park
The “Isla del Coco” is an island found off the coast of Costa Rica, about 523
kilometers southwest of Cabo Blanco in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. It is a rectangular shaped
island, surrounded completely by deep water with counter currents. The Spanish Joan
Cabezas discovered the island in 1526 and it is the only island in the Eastern Pacific with a
tropical rainforest. The island is 11,500 acres, which is fifteen times larger than Central
Park, and the entire marine protected area includes fifteen kilometers of ocean as well as
the island. With the addition of the ocean area it makes the entire marine protection zone
to be about two million acres. To reach this marine park there is only one way, by boat, for
a 36-hour ride from the Port of Puntarenas. This MPA is Central America’s largest and it
was dubbed the “Seamounts Marine Management Area” in 2011. This park was also
nicknamed the “Shark Park” due to it being the best place in the world to view large pelagic
species such as sharks, rays and dolphins. The most popular part of this entire MPA is the
underwater world that attracts hundreds of divers each year, which is also a problem when
it comes to conservation.
Coco’s Island got its origin from a volcano that causes the basaltic rock and irregular
coastline, with cliffs almost vertically from a narrow shore to heights reaching up to 200
meters. There are two main bays, which have sandy beaches, Bahia Wafer and Bahia
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Chatham, which are the only open areas to reach the island terrain itself. The underwater
profile has almost no intertidal zone and has shallow submerged fringing reefs. One of the
great attributes that Coco’s Island has is that it is in the perfect spot when it comes to
currents. This island is settled where the Northern Equatorial Current and the Equatorial
Counter Current meets. The meeting of these two currents causes the ocean to stir up
nutrients from the bottom and brings it to the island. With this large volume of nutrition
coming from the open ocean, with it brings a multitude of species, including the large
pelagic sharks that are so popular with diving crowd.
The island has a great deal of history, some of legend and some of fact. It is said that
the island was a popular hideout spot for pirates in the early sixteenth century, which is
why many people are drawn to the area because of the famed legends of buried treasure.
