hg frogman
Contributor
My wife and I just come back from a trip in Santa Catalina, on the Pacific side of Panama. We spent three weeks there. Each of us did 37 dives, mostly around Coiba Island, with a few local dives closer to Santa Catalina. We dived many of the dive sites on Coiba or around (including Contreras Islands) but neither the south-west coast of Coiba (Jicaron and Jicarita Islands) nor the Ladrones and Secas Islands (these islands are too far from Santa Catalina for daily diving).
We dived with Scuba Coiba, whose owner (Herbie) has been helpful and very honest. The same applies to his website which details very honestly (according to our experience) what one will see, and what one will not see, which visibility one will have, and so on. The pictures on this site also give a good idea (reality is a bit more colourful though).
Santa Catalina is still a laidback place, but with some fairly decent accommodations. We slept in one of the new rooms (with air conditioning) that Herbie rents, and were happy with it : not far from everything, yet quiet. On Coiba we spent a few nights in the dormitories managed by the rangers : more rustic, but the only accommodation available on the island so far.
We had no rain (except one night), no mosquitos and almost no sandfleas. We drank tap water in Santa Catalina and Coiba after asking if it was drinkable, took no prophylaxy for malaria (no need for it there apparently) and were OK like this.
Scuba Coiba is like Santa Catalina, laidback, so don't expect a Golden Five Stars Dive Center or whatever. Yet the guides (we dived with all) know their job and the divesites well. The crew carries all tanks to and from the boats, and we always had good air in our tanks, so that was fine.
We did mostly daily diving on Coiba, which implies a one-hour trip (or a bit longer) on a speedboat from Santa Catalina to the island, and the same on the way back. Sea was calm most of the time, a bit more choppy in the afternoon.
Most dive sites are a collection of many boulders (from the size of a basket ball to the size of a building, that depends on the site) laying on a flat, sandy bottom. There are also several rocky seamounts. Dives were never deep (seldom more than 24 meters/80 feet) and the bottom isn't extremely deep either (no abyssal drop-offs, apart maybe from Ladrones where we didn't go).
At this time of year, visibility around Coiba was mostly 15-18 meters/50-60 feet in shallow water (from the surface down to 18 meters/60 feet) then 9-12 meters/30-40 feet in the greenish, plankton-rich thermocline below. Water temperature was 28°C in the shallows, then about 24°C in the thermocline. Occasionally we experienced strong surge on the west coast of Coiba and on some local divesites, and viz was then reduced to a greenish 3-9 meters/10-30 feet at any depth.
Some dive sites have a small but interesting fixed fauna, with orange encrusting sponges, tiny orange cup corals, green or yellow finger-sponges, a red-and-white delicate coral that can cover vast areas of rock, small orange or grey gorgonians, some hard corals in the shallows, and an intricated, interesting topography with cracks (eg El Faro del Canales, El Chorro, La Viuda, Dos Tetas, El Porton, El Sombrero, Fisherman's Dream). Some others are barren rocks with short algae cover (a bit like in Mediterranean shallow waters) eg Frijoles, Wahoo Rock and Checkpoint, but still rich in fish most of the time. The two best local dive sites (Punta Pargo and Cotton Hill) and some sites around Coiba (eg Bajo Veinte) are quite deep seamounts with a lot of thick bushes of black corals in different hues.
The main reason for diving here is the huge quantities of fish. We saw whitetip reef sharks at every dive around Coiba, up to 20 of them circling at the same time with big blue trevallies. These sharks are not shy, sometimes quite big (2 meters/6 feet) and can be approached quite close. We saw very often enormous shoals of bigeye trevallies and batfish (literally a soup of fish sometimes !) as well as amberjacks, groups of dozens of big blue spotted trevallies, schools of rainbow runners, wahoos, schools of black-tail barracudas, lots of snappers, shoals of grunts, moray eels everywhere (also swimming freely), huge turtles, a few monstruous groupers, some enormous lobsters, and several squadrons of mobulas and eagle-rays, as well as huge stingrays circling to feed near the thermocline. On top of that, we also spotted a few frogfish and seahorses (when current allowed). But we saw no hammerhead, bull or tiger shark, and Herbie and our guides told us that these sharks, despite certainly present around Coiba, are not commonly seen by divers. We didn't spot a whale shark that other divers saw, but that's life.
Most of the dives would have been easy if there had been no current, but this was not always the case (except at slack tide and in some protected areas) so to get the full range of the diving here, we had to cope with strong currents (often finning against them and sheltering behind the boulders because many dive sites are not huge enough for drift diving). Sometimes, in unsheltered places, we experienced strong surge coming from the Pacific gentle but powerful swell. We had also some very relaxed and pleasant dives in protected places or at slack tide, still with a lot of fish action, as if the fish were enjoying chilling out in calm waters too.
Overall we liked the diving very much and we recommend the place.
We dived with Scuba Coiba, whose owner (Herbie) has been helpful and very honest. The same applies to his website which details very honestly (according to our experience) what one will see, and what one will not see, which visibility one will have, and so on. The pictures on this site also give a good idea (reality is a bit more colourful though).
Santa Catalina is still a laidback place, but with some fairly decent accommodations. We slept in one of the new rooms (with air conditioning) that Herbie rents, and were happy with it : not far from everything, yet quiet. On Coiba we spent a few nights in the dormitories managed by the rangers : more rustic, but the only accommodation available on the island so far.
We had no rain (except one night), no mosquitos and almost no sandfleas. We drank tap water in Santa Catalina and Coiba after asking if it was drinkable, took no prophylaxy for malaria (no need for it there apparently) and were OK like this.
Scuba Coiba is like Santa Catalina, laidback, so don't expect a Golden Five Stars Dive Center or whatever. Yet the guides (we dived with all) know their job and the divesites well. The crew carries all tanks to and from the boats, and we always had good air in our tanks, so that was fine.
We did mostly daily diving on Coiba, which implies a one-hour trip (or a bit longer) on a speedboat from Santa Catalina to the island, and the same on the way back. Sea was calm most of the time, a bit more choppy in the afternoon.
Most dive sites are a collection of many boulders (from the size of a basket ball to the size of a building, that depends on the site) laying on a flat, sandy bottom. There are also several rocky seamounts. Dives were never deep (seldom more than 24 meters/80 feet) and the bottom isn't extremely deep either (no abyssal drop-offs, apart maybe from Ladrones where we didn't go).
At this time of year, visibility around Coiba was mostly 15-18 meters/50-60 feet in shallow water (from the surface down to 18 meters/60 feet) then 9-12 meters/30-40 feet in the greenish, plankton-rich thermocline below. Water temperature was 28°C in the shallows, then about 24°C in the thermocline. Occasionally we experienced strong surge on the west coast of Coiba and on some local divesites, and viz was then reduced to a greenish 3-9 meters/10-30 feet at any depth.
Some dive sites have a small but interesting fixed fauna, with orange encrusting sponges, tiny orange cup corals, green or yellow finger-sponges, a red-and-white delicate coral that can cover vast areas of rock, small orange or grey gorgonians, some hard corals in the shallows, and an intricated, interesting topography with cracks (eg El Faro del Canales, El Chorro, La Viuda, Dos Tetas, El Porton, El Sombrero, Fisherman's Dream). Some others are barren rocks with short algae cover (a bit like in Mediterranean shallow waters) eg Frijoles, Wahoo Rock and Checkpoint, but still rich in fish most of the time. The two best local dive sites (Punta Pargo and Cotton Hill) and some sites around Coiba (eg Bajo Veinte) are quite deep seamounts with a lot of thick bushes of black corals in different hues.
The main reason for diving here is the huge quantities of fish. We saw whitetip reef sharks at every dive around Coiba, up to 20 of them circling at the same time with big blue trevallies. These sharks are not shy, sometimes quite big (2 meters/6 feet) and can be approached quite close. We saw very often enormous shoals of bigeye trevallies and batfish (literally a soup of fish sometimes !) as well as amberjacks, groups of dozens of big blue spotted trevallies, schools of rainbow runners, wahoos, schools of black-tail barracudas, lots of snappers, shoals of grunts, moray eels everywhere (also swimming freely), huge turtles, a few monstruous groupers, some enormous lobsters, and several squadrons of mobulas and eagle-rays, as well as huge stingrays circling to feed near the thermocline. On top of that, we also spotted a few frogfish and seahorses (when current allowed). But we saw no hammerhead, bull or tiger shark, and Herbie and our guides told us that these sharks, despite certainly present around Coiba, are not commonly seen by divers. We didn't spot a whale shark that other divers saw, but that's life.
Most of the dives would have been easy if there had been no current, but this was not always the case (except at slack tide and in some protected areas) so to get the full range of the diving here, we had to cope with strong currents (often finning against them and sheltering behind the boulders because many dive sites are not huge enough for drift diving). Sometimes, in unsheltered places, we experienced strong surge coming from the Pacific gentle but powerful swell. We had also some very relaxed and pleasant dives in protected places or at slack tide, still with a lot of fish action, as if the fish were enjoying chilling out in calm waters too.
Overall we liked the diving very much and we recommend the place.
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