Cocos Island Expedition — August-September 2024
Log Blog Part 1
NOTE: I hope you enjoy this blog series, AND I also hope you will take action to protect the wildlife of Cocos and letting the Costa Rican government know we need more action to protect the migration route of Cocos endangered marine life, by clicking here.
27 August – 7 September 2024—The bus to get us to the dock picks us up at our hotel in San Jose around 11:30 am and we are off to the port town of Puntarenas to start our watery voyage to Cocos Island National Park, located approximately 350 miles from the mainland.
En route we make two stops: a tourist shop and cafeteria for a tropical fruit smoothie; and a fruit stand filled with mangoes, lychees, guanábanas, coconuts and many other tropical fruits that are hard to find in the US (outside of Miami).
We arrive to the UnderSea Hunter dock around 1:30PM on a super low tide, so they ferry us out of the channel to the Sea Hunter …
On the ferry ride out, we pass lots of longliner fishing vessels, the bane of ocean activists that are working to protect sea turtles, sharks and seabirds that fall victim to hundreds of thousands of hooks set in Costa Rican waters for mahi-mahi. These vessels are part of an international fleet that literally sets billions of hooks each year for many species including tuna and swordfish.
Longlining fishing vessels crowd the canal docks that lead out to the Pacific (photo by Todd Steiner.)
Many of the boats look in disrepair and there may be less than I remember seeing on previous trips. Hopefully, this is more than wishful thinking, as the powerful fishing lobby in Costa Rica has managed to skirt national and international environmental legal protections, despite Costa Rica’s reputation as a worldwide environmental leader. Unfortunately, this positive standing does not extend into the marine environment.
In addition to the small research team (which will be introduced in Cocos blog Part 5), we have a diverse and interesting group of divers who will be observing our activities, while enjoying scuba diving at one of the most remote and exciting diving locations on the planet.
While we normally have several repeat participants, some who have come along to help us on 10 or more expeditions over the past 17 years, including Gina and Mark, this time we have lots of new folks. Including one real “Cocos-holic,” as we affectionately refer to folks who catch the Cocos bug and love being there as much as I do. That would be Tracy, an accountant from the Turks and Caicos who has dove Cocos on more than 25 recreational dive trips, but this is her first trip with us on a research expedition!
Other new participants on the expedition include Ronald, a professor in Costa Rica, Leslie and Sarah, friends and former dive masters, one from the Midwest and one from Australia, four dive friends, two originally from Poland, now living in Brooklyn, the others from Florida and Colorado, and Kayla from Australia, an environmental attorney. We also have two couples– Gaines and Beth who also reside in Colorado, and Carl and Fernanda who live in Mexico City. Kaylam coincidentally is also from Turks & Caicos, but didn’t previously know Tracy, and coincidentally is also a shark biologist—that we didn’t know until we met him on this trip.
Front Row L-R: Pipi, Hector, Ian, Diego, Phyllis, Fernanda, Randall, Luis. Back row: Burro, Kaylam, Elisa, Gina, Gaines, Beth, Eliza, Leslie, Carl, Sarah, Ronald, Tracy, Anamaria, Mark, Marta, Todd.
Their participation helps fill and pay for our charter, as the vessel costs around $100,000 for the 10-day adventure. Without their participation, the vessel costs would be prohibitive. Not only is their presence helping fund important conservation research, we expect a significant subset of these folks will become ocean activists and Cocos-holics and we will see them again on future trips!
An hour later on the little ferry ride out of the canal, we reach the Gulfo Dulce, where the SeaHunter , our home for the next 10 days, is waiting for us.
The Sea Hunter Awaits us as we enter the Gulfo Dulce and begin our crossing to Cocos Island (photo by Todd Steiner.)
We now have approximately 36 hours of at-sea time before we arrive at Cocos! Thankfully, the seas are quite calm, rain seems to be occurring in the distance but not on us. This turns out to be a good omen that holds for the entire trip.
We have a day and a half to get our gear and equipment together, watch for (and see) dolphins, sea turtles, and seabirds break the calm surface of the seas, enjoy the sunsets, get to know our new boat mates, and catch up with our regulars and crew we haven’t seen for awhile.
The crossing to Cocos usually involves some amazing sunsets, this one accompanied by a brown booby that flies circles around the boat for hours at a time (photo by Todd Steiner.)
Spinner and Spotted Dolphins often approach the SeaHunter to ride the bow waves on the crossing to and from Cocos (photo by Todd Steiner.)
Video by Marta Torne.
In Cocos Log Blog 2, we will describe the passage to Cocos and describe why this place is so unique. In Part 3 and Part 4, we will discuss the amazing underwater life of Cocos and in Part 5, we will discuss our research objectives for this expedition.
