Barro Colorado Island & Panama Canal
Welcome to Barro Colorado Island. Also known – in scientific jargon – as BCI, the research station in this island has produced much of the knowledge about the tropical rain forests. This island’s story begins in 1910; after damming the Chagres River to create the Gatun Lake, scientists undertook a survey of the area that would be flooded. The inventory was conducted from 1910 to 1912 and eventually continued through all of Panama; specifically in 1924 the largest island within the lake had been transformed into a research station. The Neotropics had never been studied in depth, but after the first effort, researchers were in awe, they had entered an, until then, unfamiliar world of diversity and complexity. Since then, this research center has produced some of the longest records – and therefore knowledge – on tropical data in the world.
Unique to Lindblad Expeditions, we will be guests of STRI and allowed to walk some of the trails or to cruise along the protected shorelines with our Zodiacs. During our activities, we are fortunate to be guided by some of the BCI guides, some of which have done research in the area. As we hike the paths our guides talk about the ecology, the plants, insects and other wildlife, we can hardly imagine what Zetek, Chapman, Standley, Moynihan and Gross thought as they entered this dense forest for the first time and discovered organisms never described by science before. Everything and anything has been researched here: bat ecology, echolocation and behavior, animal communication, insect monitoring, pollen studies, figs and fig wasps, plant and fungi mutualism, nocturnal bee vision, automated radio telemetry, real-time animal tracking, habitat loss and its effect on birds and other organisms; the list can go on and on. The best part of this story is that all of this understanding of a habitat can be used for education; once we understand something we are more likely to want to protect it, and live at peace with it.
Back from our excursions, hot and tired, we had a fabulous lunch, after which we got ready for the second half of our Canal crossing. As soon as our Panama Canal Pilot came on board, we headed down south towards the infamous Culebra Cut – also known as the Gaillard Cut – and to take our two sets of locks down 86 feet onto the Pacific Ocean: the Pedro Miguel Locks and the Miraflores Locks. As we left the last set of locks and cruised under the bridge of the Americas we went to bed pleased and very ready to recharge our batteries for the rest of the week on board National Geographic Sea Lion.
