Cocos Island Update 02-28-08

Costa Rica, Texas, Washington D.C., Colorado, Cocos Island. A few of the places visited during the past three weeks. Meetings, family visits, and lots of work mixed with pleasure. The recent trip to Cocos produced lots of footage and Pictures. Some amazing experiences were captured, and some good friends made with people that are trying to do their part in helping the worlds oceans. Right now Cocos Island is full of life. It is currently a La Nina year which means that the ocean is slightly colder than normal, and this is bringing unusually large numbers of life to cocos island for this time of the year. This video contains a few clips from this past trip to Cocos and is a sample video of Rogue Studios underwater footage shark bank.


Most of these shots are from Cocos and Mal Pelo Island. They are alone in the quantities of large pelagic life that they attract. This is partially due to the fact that they are well out of range of most fishing boats. The boats that do make it to the islands to fish, do have a huge impact though. We see it in the amount of lost fishing line we see, and the occasional victims that are still attached to the long lines. Recently a large Tuna boat was documented and apprehended while fishing inside the park. The evidence against the boat was overwhelming, yet it has since been released and it looks like the $5,000,000.00 fine they were given will be waved. The politics that have to be dealt with in order to simply keep the law upheld are frustrating. Rogue Studios is currently helping produce a "shock" video though that hopefully will help either scare or embarrass some large sea food wholesalers and restaurants into being more selective and careful when they choose who to buy their seafood from. One step at a time...... Here are some more pictures.

Sea Hunter Captain Christiano Paoli took this picture of a Silver Tip shark just as I was entering the water above.


As the different sea birds hunt at sea, they regularly fight over their catch. Here a Boobie (far right) has just vomited its catch after being ruthlessly pursued by the much larger Frigates. The Frigates snatched the fish out f the air immediately and then moved on to harass the next Boobie. The Frigates cannot dive to hunt, so they rely on the Boobies to hunt for them. It is a regular event of hunting and survival at sea.

Ten days in two minutes

January was a busy month on Cocos Island. Lots of Diving, Paul Allens boat the Octopus showed up, and some hiking to rarely seen parts of the island. Heres a quick compilation of some of the activity during ten days of January.

Destination of the Species

During the past few trips to Cocos Island I have been able to find several species previously unknown to reside there. One is an undescribed Flabellina Nudibranch of the Aeolid species (above). The members of this family have names that use words like Rhinophore to describe their appendages which seem more like something you would see on an artist rendering of a dinosaur than a delicate deep sea creature. The other creature found is a Side Gilled Slug called Berthella Californica (below). The name denotes a slimy undesireable, with extremely primitive features. Yet the name is deceptive again and does nothing to describe the delicate beauty this "slug" exibits. If you look close it even appears to have tiny pearls on its back. One always hopes to find something new, but my search for a new species will have to continue since these are both known to science. The Nudibranch is still an undescribed species though, and a specimen may be able to be aquired soon from Cocos, since our submersible DeepSee is getting fitted with a hydrolic arm soon. The specimens we have seen have been in the 80m - 180m (240ft - 600ft) ranges so diving on an open circute system to retrive a specimen would be difficult at best. I would like to thank John E. McCosker, Chair of Aquatic Biology at the California Academy of Sciences , and Dr. Terrance Gosliner also at the California Academy of Sciences for their help in identifying these species on Cocos Island.

Cocos Island Update

Cocos Island is as impressive a place as any. It is currently up for nomination as a possible "new" 7 natural wonders of the world member. The topside of the island is full of lush jungles with waterfalls generously spilling fresh water into the pacific ocean. Underwater the island boasts an even richer bounty of life that includes everything from giant whale sharks on the surface, to tiny shrimps that help start the food chain at 1000ft below the surface. This trip to the island was particularly eventful. We explored some new areas of the sea floor and found a new sea mount. We found another new species that is possibly unidentified that we are adding to the one from last trip. Paul Allens boat the Octopus showed up and we did a tandem dive with his Submarine Pagoo to one of our dive sites on the Northern part of the island. It was an impressive week and a half to have survived. Unfortunantly some of the memories are not all good. The islands main threat has hit home several times recently. Long lines continue to be a huge problem for the island. On the new sea mount we found unusually large amounts of tangled long line. Shmulik Blum also found an almost dead prickly shark at about 170m while diving in the submersible DeepSee, that appears to have been gutted for the purpose of retreaving the attached long line. The position where we found this shark was only one nautical mile offshore of the island, and about 11 nautical miles inside the parks outer limits. That means the shark was probably caught well inisde the parks boundries. These sharks are few and far between (we saw none this trip) and reside in the deeper depths around Cocos Island, swimming slowly and running from light. What was interesting about this encounter was that three hours later when the shark was revisited, it had been partially eaten by something large.... Partially means about 200lbs of flesh eaten in about four bites. What it was, we don't know. The dead shark is about 13ft long. What was nice to see this trip were the large schools of hammerheads which are currently visiting the island in huge numbers. Their numbers this trip were a nice beacon of hope for those concerned with the state of our oceans.

Long Lines Up Close

It is increasingly en vogue to be enviornmentaly aware, friendly, or just plain green. In becoming so, long lines become an enemy. Long lines are something most people seem to have heard about these days. But they don't effect most people, no matter how enviornmentaly concious they are. It is nice to recycle at home where a garbageman conveniently picks up your recycling from in front of your house. Not buying bottled water in tiny plastic bottles even helps cut down on pollution. These are ways to help the world we live in. My camera seems to continuously find itself infront of situations that defy and laugh in the face of people who make efforts to help our world. Yesterday one of those situations arose. About 25 miles offshore of Costa Rica we ran into a long line that had probably been in the water less that 8 hrs. We were looking for spinner dolphins and bait balls in the hopes of filming them. We had seen lots of the spinner dolphins several days previous. Instead we found a few miles of long line. On it we found a green turtle that had taken the squid bait, and gotten hooked. The long lines are after tuna, sharks, swordfish and marlin. The turtles are just a by catch that gets disposed of. We took a moment to take some pictures and film the scene before releasing the turtle. It is ironic that the tin can which held some tuna, and is now being recycled in a far off place, has affected this turtle so far out to sea. It is just another example of the imbalance present in the world. I'd like to thanks my brother Ben for his amazing photography, and Capt. Rick of the Kingfisher for helping us out this week.

Out of the Jungle Day 4-5

After seeing Rio Sirena with our own eyes, we felt ill prepared to document it like we wanted to. Without our kayaks and underwater equipment we were limited to watching from the shore as the sharks and crocs moved about. Ben especially was at a disadvantage since his telephoto lens became a temporary victim of the jungle humidity. He still got some great shots though. We got what we could there, and then started back late for the Leona Ranger station where we left our kayaks. It was a nice walk back, and the wildlife was abundant along the trail as dusk aproached. Mokeys threw branches at us, and strange birds showed themselves through the underbrush. An anteater even apeared and made a hasty retreat up a tree. The trip certainly did not end as we got to the rager station, since a long drive and a long shower were still to be undertaken, but our exit from the jungle was definately felt. We boarded our kayaks the next morning and quickly covered the distance back to Playa Carate and our truck with calm seas and "mellow" waves pounding the beach during our entry and exit of the sea. Izzie even saw a whale on the way. This trip defiantely showed us alot about the coastal waters of the Osa Peninsula. Although it is still a refuge for marine animals, much still needs to be done. It is not a hopeless situation, but one that could be improved upon in very simple ways. An image that I take with me which demonstrates this, would be one of the park rangers illegaly drivig a vehicle down the beach and then fishing several miles inside the park. Like I said, it is the simple things like integrity that could help a place like this more than anything.

Into True Jungle Day 1-3

After 9 hours, 12 river crossings, and several thousand potholes, we made it to Carate beach on the Osa Peninsula. We spent some time camping there and getting ready for our entrance into the park, which requires permits. This area of the Penninsula is full of life since it borders the Corcovado National Parks jungle and marine edges. Scarlet Macaws and monkeys are found everywhere, and one begins to feel the energy emitted by the vast amounts of life hidden in the surrounding jungle.


We finally made it off the beach and into the water with our laden sea kayaks. The few miles distance to the park ranger station was covered slowly since a headwind and coastal currents were against us, but we arrived in good spirits and ready to continue on. Unfortuantly the rangers had never dealt with sea kayaks though, and debated through the night whether to let us into the park by sea kayak. Dangerous rocks, sharks, and the excuse of, "this is just a strange thing to do" we all used to disuade us from entering by kayak. In the end the Rangers decided to not let us into the park with the kayaks and so we obliged and entered ill prepared on foot. The 16km to our destination of Rio Sirena took about 5hrs on foot to cover.

The coastline near Rio Sirena is quite amazing. Wild, desolate, and beautiful are all worthy adjectives to describe it. It is an area where one almost expects to see Bull sharks and crocodiles coexisting, as if it was a normal event. In Sirena, it is actually. We spent several hight tides wading into the water and trying to document these animals as they went about their normal activities. The Bull sharks enter the river mouth to feed on smaller fish which live abundantly in the river, and the crocs lounge about and wait for oportune moments to feed upon unsuspecting prey. It is about as "wild" an event as can be found anywhere. One disapointment for us though was that the amount of sharks seen was relatively few. Stories told us of swarms of sharks fighting to gain entrance. Although we expected these to be exagerated, what we saw was very disapointing. The bull sharks seem to be succuming to the same fate here as in other places, a slow killing off.