Costa Cetacea

Dolphins dancing in Costa Rica for Laura Chinchilla.

Costa Rica Protects a Big Bunch of the Big Blue.

Denizens of the deep rejoice! Costa Rica is getting serious about protecting pelagic. The enormous protected area around Coco Island National Park and nearby seamounts is called the Seamounts Marine Management Area, Area Marina de Manejo Montes Submarinos. Weighing in at around a million protected marine hectares, Costa Rica is now a world heavy weight when it comes to marine conservation, and not a moment to soon. 

Bottoms up to Seamounts.

First published in The Tico Times.

President Laura Chinchilla has garnered accolades for the recent creation of the Seamounts Marine Management Area around Isla del Coco, Costa Rica’s legendary “Treasure Island” and national park nearly 600 kilometers off the Pacific coast (TT, March 18). The 964,000-hectare marine protected area is named after mountains under the sea in the region. So what’s up with seamounts? Here’s the deep down on these undersea masses.

Seamounts rise from the ocean floor around the world. There are so many that worldwide total estimates may differ by more than 100,000. And that’s just for the big ones. There are tens of thousands of known giant mountains that have erupted to over 1,000 meters above the bottom. Volcanic eruptions are the only way you get a seamount.

Seamounts are thought to collectively cover an area of earth well over double the size of all the world’s wetlands, sea grass beds, coral reefs, mangroves and beaches put together. Put another way, these mountains under the sea make up one of the largest life zones on earth. People will still be discovering seamounts for a long time.

When magma rises up though areas of the earth’s crust, the place is appropriately called a hot spot. As the earth’s crust sails by over the hot spot, seamounts are created. The Hawaiian Islands are perhaps the most famous example of seamounts forming over a hot spot and, over millions of years, drifting hundreds of kilometers away as new seamounts form.

The Galápagos Islands are also formed from a hot spot. These undersea mountains drift northeast over the eons, riding on the Cocos tectonic plate. Isla del Coco seems to have been formed over the Galápagos hot spot, and, being much older than the current Galápagos Islands, has sailed much closer to Costa Rica. Still older seamounts from the Galápagos hot spot may be the Osa and Nicoya peninsulas. These seamounts have pegged the continent, thus becoming part of the Costa Rican mainland. So there are people living in Costa Rica on seamounts right now.

But most seamounts are underwater and are inhabited by denizens of the deep, not humans. Seamounts are basically fish magnets. The structures provide nooks and crannies for life to bloom with a greater bioproductivity and biodiversity than in most other ocean areas.

Deep seamounts are often chock full of marine life, from whales and sharks to corals and sea stars. Certain seamounts are important gathering places for large pelagic animals. The hammerhead shark congregations of Isla del Coco National Park are perhaps the world’s most famous example of seamount big-animal attraction. We know about the hammerheads only because of divers. Divers have visited just a handful of seamounts in the world, so you have to wonder what other big-animal congregations are going on around all the other, undiscovered seamounts.

Deep-sea corals on seamounts give us even more to wonder about. The oldest animal in the world, a black coral by the name of Leiopathes, is thought to be 4,200 years old, and was discovered on a seamount. There are quite a few other deep seamount corals, like the excellently named gold corals, which are also thought to live for thousands of years.

Because less than 1 percent of the world’s seamounts have been explored, and most known ones are seriously damaged by commercial fishing or other resource extraction, protecting them is a brilliant idea. Mountains under the sea are well worth some conservation effort, as there are sure to be decades of discovery from this fantastic frontier.

Seamounts Marine Management Area around Costa Rica’s Isla del Coco. Courtesy of Isla del Coco Marine Conservation Area.

President Laura Chinchilla took a beautiful big blue step into the arena of ocean conservation earlier this month when she created the biggest marine conservation area in Costa Rica, protecting 964,000 hectares of marine territory around Isla del Coco, Costa Rica’s legendary “Treasure Island” and national park some 600 kilometers west of the Pacific port of Puntarenas.

For the first time in history, Costa Rica is showing interest in protecting all its ecosystems. Pelagic, abyssal, benthic and seamount ecosystems are the broad categories of life protected in the new and aptly named Seamounts Marine Management Area. These masterpiece creations of evolution can now join the famous Costa Rican club of the protected. Peace is being made with the oceans – no ecosystems left behind.

The protected area will be for artisan, sport and regulated commercial fishing that does not damage the environment, Fernando Quirós, director of the Isla del Coco Conservation Area, told the daily La Nación. He said that Costa Rican fishers themselves indicated the area they could fish if multinational tuna purse seiners were not damaging the ecosystems. Tuna dozers are well-known marine-life-massacre machines in Costa Rica, and kill a huge diversity of animals in addition to the targeted tuna.

Costa Rica appears to intend to make Tico small-scale fishers stakeholders in the area by granting fishing permits, hopefully to sustainable fishing practices. Community stakeholders, not just wealthy elite, participating in managing a protected resource for their own long-term gain, while perhaps controversial to some, is likely the only way such a marine protected area could work in the long run.

Around the world, the community stakeholder system has proven to be the most effective method of protecting marine resources, especially if the plan is not to receive endless donations of free money to keep things rolling.

Think Ostional, on the northern Pacific coast, where the community harvests olive ridley sea turtles sustainably. After decades of harvest, the olive ridley is the only marine turtle in the world that is not listed as endangered. With a lot of work, this visionary management area could teach Costa Ricans to catch fish sustainably, and not expect fish dozer-fueled handouts.

Dolphins, not just Costa Rican fishers, will benefit from getting rid of the tuna dozers, because the ships target dolphins with their nets to corral the tuna that normally swim right beneath them, killing and massively stressing thousands of dolphins in the process.

But the news is not so great for sharks and billfish, as longliners will still be allowed to fish tuna in these waters. Every longline I have ever seen over many years at sea hooks far more sharks and billfish than tuna. Allowing longlining in a protected area is a corrupt step backward, as our neighbor to the south, Panama, has recognized by banning the practice in its waters (TT, March 4).

Ironically, most Costa Ricans and tourists will never see or fish the Seamounts Marine Management Area. Much of it is even more remote than the famously and fabulously isolated Cocos Island. Only the wealthiest of Costa Rican fishers will be able to access the area. For this same reason, enforcement of the rules in the protected area will be rather difficult.

An obvious solution would be to also create a decent-sized marine protected area for mainland Costa Ricans and tourists to enjoy, and fish some ocean without tuna dozers razing the resource.

The waters offshore of the Osa Peninsula’s Corcovado National Park and Caño Island Biological Reserve, which are already visited by many Costa Rican fishers and tourists on day trips, contain a greater concentration and diversity of dolphins and whales than any other place in the country. Yet the tuna dozers do not hesitate to tell tourists and fishers to leave the area so they can attack the dolphins. The only reasons I can see to not protect this area are corruption, myopia and greed.

And what about the Nicoya Peninsula and Guanacaste in the north? I’m guessing the good people of these areas would like to fish and enjoy their oceans without the ecological damage of unsustainable fishing practices. And let’s not forget the Caribbean side, either.

Three cheers for Laura Chinchilla for taking her first blue step.

Let’s hope she learns to dance.