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Area Recreativa Lago Gatun
Galeta these days
Your typical Panamanian household reptilian predators
The Taboga boat
A student intern's take after a summer down here
 

photo by Eric Jackson

Galeta these days

photos by Eric Jackson and Joel Inwood

For decades, Galeta was kind of a restricted area. Among Zonians there were all sorts of rumors about what was there, many descended from World War II lore about submarines being serviced from there. What the US Navy was actually protecting was an electronic listening post that was really quite modern in the days before spy satellites. Now that facility, shown above, stands abandoned, one of the failures of converting the former Canal Zone's military sites to uses in the Panamanian economy.

When treaty time came around, the Navy's listening post was no longer so modern or so top-secret, and Galeta Point became a popular beach for the Americans who stayed behind. That lasted for a few years, until a big oil spill turned what was once a gaudily colored living reef into a lifeless gray underwater wasteland. But that tragedy, now nearly 20 years past, was turned into a great research opportunity by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, which has turned the spill site into the world's most closely monitored recovery zone. The Smithsonian has taken over Galeta Island for a research station, which one can visit if arrangements are made in advance.

The area's future is very much in doubt. The CEMIS project's plan was to extend the France Field runway nearly to the water's edge and other intrusions into the surrounding mangroves are trashing the nursery for many of the organisms that thrive on the reefs.

photo by Joel Inwood

A whale skeleton on display at the Smithsonian's research station. Photo by Eric Jackson

Galeta is next to a busy waterway, the north end of the Panama Canal. Photo by Eric Jackson

And although it isn't nearly as famous as Barro Colorado Island, Galeta is a major tropical research site. Photos of the seawall (above)  and the research station (below) by Eric Jackson