 "Photo: Scott Solomon")
 "Photo: Scott Solomon")
COCOS ISLAND, COSTA RICA - It sounds fictional: an uninhabited tropical island, covered in steaming jungle and towering waterfalls, with dozens of unique species of animals and plants - and with a legendary treasure rumored to be buried somewhere beneath its rugged hills.
But Cocos Island is just such a place. Some say it was the inspiration for Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" and Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park." In reality, this island may be more compelling than the tales it has inspired.
Cocos Island is now a Costa Rican national park, but its status as a conservation area does not make it immune to environmental threats such as the introduction of invasive species and the practice of illegal fishing. The park rangers who work to protect Cocos have a difficult task: Preserve not only the biologically and historically rich island itself, but also the 763-square-mile marine corridor that surrounds it, an area three-fourths the size of Travis County.
At 300 miles off the coast of Central America, it is a long journey from the mainland on one of two small boats that make the passage. Just like Hawaii is to the United States, Cocos is that disjunct section on the map of Costa Rica - a part of the country that exists so far from everything else that most Costa Ricans are only vaguely aware of its existence.
The island is essentially off-limits to tourists. Although it is a national park, it can only be visited during daylight hours. By nightfall, visitors must be on board their boats, which serve as floating homes for tourists while anchored in one of the island's bays.
Fortunately, Cocos does allow access to scientific researchers, which is how this Daily Texan reporter and biology graduate student was able to spend nearly three weeks there in February.
Lone rangers
Driving down the highway that descends from San Jose to the port city of Puntarenas, Walter Madriz is fighting traffic in an attempt to reach the dock before the ship Okeanos Aggressor embarks. As a ranger for Cocos Island National Park, Madriz keeps the island supplied with groceries, fuel and equipment. The Okeanos serves as one of the island's only connections to the mainland but only visits about once a week.
Madriz, one of the first park rangers ever to be stationed on Cocos Island, is a tall, thin man who looks a bit like a Latin version of Abraham Lincoln. He has spent more than 12 years serving the national park and works for a month at a time on the island in between two-week breaks, as do all the island's dozen or so park rangers.
But working on a deserted island hundreds of miles from home is exhausting. Despite his vegetarian diet and regular yoga practice, Madriz says his work on Cocos has begun to affect his health. His black hair, tied in a pony tail, has become tinged with gray in the past two years. He says he can no longer handle the harsh conditions his job on the island entails. Madriz now spends only a few months a year stationed on the island, working the rest of the time on the mainland as a liaison between the isolated rangers and the civilized world.
Madriz is rushing to help load supplies on the Okeanos before it embarks for Cocos, but he arrives at the dock a few minutes late. Fortunately, the supplies have already been stowed on the boat by Madriz' colleague, who appears visibly perturbed by his tardiness. Nevertheless, Madriz maintains his perpetually cool demeanor and takes advantage of the unexpected extra time to enjoy a seaside meal of steamed clams. He will not be leaving on this trip to Cocos Island, but Madriz has made the 36-hour journey many times in the past.
A comfortable outpost
After a day and a half at sea, the steep, green coastline of Cocos Island is a welcome sight. The Okeanos drops its anchor in the protected waters of Chatham Bay, one of only two safe coves on the island. The supplies on board are destined for the park's main station in nearby Wafer Bay, so the crew transfers the hefty load to a small inflatable dinghy as it bounces up and down alongside the Okeanos.
The main station consists of two buildings with offices, a kitchen, a dining hall and housing for the three to five rangers who are typically in residence. The recent completion of a hydroelectric plant supplies electricity for television, public phones and even computers complete with Internet access, all via satellite. The plant, with its small concrete dam, metal shed that houses the turbines and the nearly mile-long PVC piping that connect them contrast sharply with the dense forest on this supposedly uninhabited island. To minimize the eyesore its construction created, the Costa Rican Electricity Institute painted the shed and the pipes green.
Park ranger Guillermo Blanco is responsible for maintaining the plant. Standing on top of the 5-foot dam wall, Blanco turns a large gray wheel to raise a metal door on one side of the dam, draining the small reservoir behind it. Blanco cleans the dam and the turbines every eight days. Otherwise, the accumulated debris could block the pipes and damage the machinery.
Blanco points out a small staircase built into the middle of the dam, designed to allow clingfish to pass through. The freshwater fish is known for its ability to attach itself to slippery rock surfaces - a major advantage on Cocos, where waterfalls occur around almost every bend.
Nevertheless, Blanco is concerned that the stairway's angle might be too gradual, making the current too strong for the small fish to ascend. He also said several other freshwater fish species in the stream cannot climb like clingfish. Most likely, these other species will be stranded on one or the other side of the dam.
Fishy Practices
In the middle of Chatham Bay, Ricardo Bonilla disappears beneath the water, leaving only the periodic eruption of bubbles at the surface to mark his position. Keeping an eye on his progress, the ship's crew carefully maneuver the vessel around Bonilla, maintaining a constant distance in case he needs support. This scuba dive is not recreational. A heavy cement block, which anchors the ship's mooring buoy, needs to be moved to prevent damaging a section of coral, a crew member explains. Nearly an hour later, Bonilla finally emerges and hoists his bulky dive equipment onto the hot metal floor of the boat's working deck after successfully relocating the rogue block to a harmless patch of sand on the sea floor.
Bonilla is captain of the MarViva I, one of an identical pair of small, gray boats that patrol the waters around Cocos Island to prevent illegal fishing. Over-harvesting of fish, particularly sharks, caused their numbers to decline in recent years, according to the national park. Although the zone around the island is restricted for 12 miles in all directions, the park itself does not have boats large enough to effectively patrol the entire area. The MarViva Foundation, a non-governmental marine conservation organization, has purchased the boats and hired local experts, such as Bonilla, to help the park prevent unauthorized fishermen from entering the restricted area.
The abundance of marine life attracts tourists as well, despite the inaccessibility of the island. Most of the estimated 1,100 annual visitors are drawn to Cocos because its waters contain one of the highest concentrations of sharks and other large marine animals in the world. At Cocos, divers are often surrounded by schools of more than 100 hammerhead and white-tip reef sharks, as well as enormous manta rays and the largest fish in the ocean, the whale shark.
These sharks are highly coveted by fishermen, because their fins, considered to be an aphrodisiac, are highly valued in Asian markets. The practice of shark-finning, whereby a shark is caught, its fins removed and its still-living body tossed back to sea, has been a source of contention between fishermen and conservation groups, according to a March 24 article in The Tico Times, an English-language Costa Rican newspaper. A law passed in 2005 bans the unloading of shark fins in Costa Rican ports without their bodies attached. However, according to the article, conservation groups point out possible loopholes that allow for the possibility of attaching multiple fins to a single shark, which could counteract the protection the law was intended to provide. The International Society for Conservation and Protection of Sharks named Costa Rica's president Abel Pacheco "Shark Enemy of 2005" as a result of his country's inability to control shark-finning both inside and outside the park.
Bonilla came to work for MarViva after hearing about the Spanish organization's efforts to protect marine life and prevent shark-finning.
"I don't like seeing people fishing only to cut the fins off of sharks," Bonilla says. "I don't like injustices."
Coming from a family of fishermen, Bonilla is well suited for his job as MarViva captain. He first visited Cocos Island with his family's tuna boat at age 10. He also taught naval mechanics at the National Training Institute in Costa Rica after working on a ferry and several commercial fishing boats. Unlike some fishermen who are unaware or indifferent to the impact of their practices, Bonilla has always had an understanding of the importance of conservation.
"What my family taught me was to see the beauty of nature," he says.
Bonilla estimates that six to eight fishing boats per day are typically present in the area, although they do not always enter the restricted zone. Those caught fishing inside the national park are brought to the attention of park rangers who assist the MarViva crew to confiscate their fishing equipment, he says.
The fish populations appear to be responding to the increased vigilance. In the three years that Bonilla has been working with MarViva, he says he has noticed an increase in the abundance of marine life, especially tuna and sharks.
Treasure Island
Long before it was recognized as a conservation priority, Cocos was used as a hideout by pirates who patrolled the coast of Central and South America pillaging Spanish settlements. Cocos' location and climate proved ideal not only as a place to rest and acquire fresh water and food, but also for stashing loot. Several large treasures are said to be hidden in Cocos' rugged hills, including one rumored to be the richest in history, according to the book "Cocos Island" by Christopher Weston-Knight.
Among them is the so-called "Great Treasure of Lima," worth an estimated $12 million to $60 million when it was taken to Cocos by Captain William Thompson in 1820. It contained gold and silver from some 50 churches in Lima, Peru, as well as much of the accumulated wealth of the Spanish government in the Americas. The treasure was reportedly buried on Cocos Island, but no historical record exists of its discovery, according to Weston-Knight.
Not that no one has looked. More than 300 expeditions have set out in vain to recover the famed treasures, including 19th-century German adventurer August Gissler, who dedicated his life to finding them. Gissler lived on Cocos for nearly 20 years and dug massive trenches into the hillsides, several of which are still visible today.
Though Costa Rica used to grant permits for treasure hunting on Cocos, the establishment of the national park has put an end to this chapter of the island's history. Today, the park administration's focus is on conservation and research. The future development of facilities at the park stations is intended to allow scientists better infrastructure for conducting research on the island, according to German Haug, coordinator of the park's Biodiversity Management Unit. Other plans include construction of a laboratory, a pier to allow easier boat access and another power plant to provide electricity to the park's second, smaller station.
Research on Cocos' unique flora and fauna has been limited so far, party because of difficulties associated with accessing the island. Although the park charges a $25 entry fee, plus additional fees for divers, it still has not raised enough money for its own fleet of seaworthy boats. That means it is completely dependent on tourist boats for transporting supplies and personnel from the mainland and on MarViva for patrolling its waters.
As one of the park's most knowledgeable rangers, Blanco knows Cocos better than almost anyone alive today. He believes the treasure is nothing more than a legend. Blanco has explored most of the island, setting out at times with nothing more than a machete in his hand and a coconut in his backpack. Although he has a keen eye for spotting wildlife, he has never come across any signs of treasure.
Nevertheless, the allure of lost fortune can be compelling, and even Blanco finds himself musing over where it might be located. He describes a flat area on top of one of the more inaccessible mountains, with a large clearing under the forest's canopy where the treasure is rumored to lie hidden.
The hoard's alleged resting grounds overlook Chatham Bay, where the Okeanos sits at anchor. Boulders ranging from the size of a watermelon to that of a small car lie strewn along the beach. Waves crash into them as the tide rises, sending a salty spray several feet into the air. On each of these boulders, etched like an entry into the island's guestbook, are the names and dates of the countless ships that have visited over the years. Older, more elegant scripts lay alongside modern, more haphazard scribblings.
Several of these markings have eroded over the years and are no longer legible. But those that remain bear witness to the comings and goings of the bay's visitors. They were once pirates looking to hide their riches but are now those who seek to preserve and enjoy the island's natural wealth.
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