Coco Island

About

Cocos Island (Spanish: Isla del Coco) is a volcanic island in the Pacific Ocean administered by Costa Rica, approximately 550 km (342 mi; 297 nmi) southwest of the Costa Rican mainland. It constitutes the 11th of the 15 districts of Puntarenas Canton of the Province of Puntarenas. With an area of approximately 23.85 km2 (9.21 sq mi), the island is roughly rectangular in shape. It is the southernmost point of geopolitical North America if non-continental islands are included, and the only landmass above water on the Cocos tectonic plate. The island has been designated a Costa Rican National Park since 1978 and has no inhabitants other than park rangers. Surrounded by deep waters with counter-currents, Cocos Island is admired by scuba divers for its populations of hammerhead sharks, rays, dolphins and other large marine species. The wet climate and oceanic qualities give Cocos an ecological character that is not shared with either the Galápagos Archipelago or other islands in the eastern Pacific, such as Malpelo, Gorgona or Coiba. Because of the unique ecology of the island and its surrounding waters, Cocos Island National Park became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. It can only be reached by sea, which usually takes 36 to 48 hours.

The island is believed to have been uninhabited by humans prior to European discovery. However, there has been little archaeological investigation into oceanic eastern Pacific islands, including Cocos Island. This is due to the fragile environments on such islands, which for many years have been untouched by humans, and because these islands are at a considerable distance from islands that had Polynesian populations. Likewise, Indigenous Americans on the west coast of the continent were not known to inhabit any remote eastern Pacific islands. In 2008, Cocos Island, the Desventuradas Islands, Galápagos Islands and Juan Fernández Islands (all uninhabited when discovered by Europeans) were surveyed by archaeologists from the Australian National University. Their investigation found that the Galápagos Islands may have been visited by a Polynesian vessel, but it is unclear what their findings were for Cocos Island.

In his Historia general y natural de las Indias (1535, expanded in 1851 from his previously unpublished papers), Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés discusses the discovery of the island by his contemporary, Spanish navigator Juan de Cabezas (also known as Juan de Grado), in 1526. D. Lievre, Una isla desierta en el Pacífico; la isla del Coco in Los viajes de Cockburn y Lievre por Costa Rica (1962: 134) tells that the first document with the name "Isle de Coques" is a map painted on parchment, called that of Henry II, that appeared in 1542 during the reign of Francis I of France. The planisphere of Nicolas Desliens (1556, Dieppe) places this Ysle de Coques about one and a half degrees north of the Equator. Willem Blaeu's Grand Atlas, originally published in 1662, has a colour world map on the back of its front cover which shows I. de Cocos right on the Equator. Frederik De Witt's Atlas, 1680 shows it similarly. The Hondius Broadside map of 1590 shows I. de Cocos at 2 degrees and 30 minutes north latitude, while in 1596 Theodore de Bry showed the Galápagos Islands near 6 degrees north of the Equator. Emanuel Bowen, in A Complete system of Geography, Volume II (London, 1747: 586), states that the Galápagos islands stretch 5 degrees north of the Equator. James Colnett, surveying eastern Pacific islands for British whaling interests, visited Cocos Island in 1793 and took on board his ship two thousand coconuts. He left a boar and sow, and a male and female goat. George Vancouver, arriving two years later, anchored his ships Discovery and Chatham in what is now called Chatham Bay. He took on water, wood, and a great number of coconuts. Before leaving he had the date of their arrival with the names of the ships and their commanders cut on a rock, joining the one single inscription that was already there. Both Colnett and Vancouver published charts in 1798. Among Colnett's charts was a "Plan of the Island Cocos". Vancouver's chart of the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) contained an inset of Cocos Island. Captain Edward Belcher anchored at Chatham Bay in 1838. He observed that whalers had cut all the wood fit for fuel and that the only coconut trees seen were inaccessible. He added his ship's name to the growing number of inscriptions. With the notable exception of the Galápagos Islands, there was a lack of scientific research into oceanic eastern Pacific islands prior to the 20th century. Publication The American Naturalist stated in 1891, "we know nothing at all about the fauna and flora of the isolated Clipperton Island and Malpelo; we hardly know anything about Cocos Island, which seems to be in many respects quite different from the others, having a more tropical appearance."

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.