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Abstract NATURE IS AMAZING Inez Campbell Punta Culebra’s history dates back to the Spanish Conquest,
when the islands of Naos, Flamenco and Perico were used as a harbor
for the old city of Panama. Through time, this place served as a
home to fishermen, a loading port for ships with deep drafts, a
quarantine station, from 1915 until the Second World War the islands
that formed the Calzada de Amador served to defend the Canal; and
a few years later, a camping area for young explorers and a site
for STRI’s first marine investigations. Undisturbed by man,
the sandy beach and the rocky coast were protected from fishing
and harvesting. Scientists affiliated to STRI and to the University
of Panama have used Punta Culebra’s habitats as a main research
area for ecological studies of the rocky intertidal zone and the
organisms that populate the sandy beach. These invertebrate populations
attract shorebirds, including migrants that visit during the north-temperate
winter. Untouched by shellfish collectors, the rocks are rich with
encrusting algae, snails, limpets, chitons, barnacles, and crabs
and the natural tide pools, some the size of small swimming pools,
which are havens for a diversity of fish, sea slugs, echinoderms
and marine worms. Culebra offers a better link between basic research
and our academic and public exhibition programs. In forging these
links, we hope to convey information and to give non-scientists
the opportunity to experience the excitement of the scientific process
that leads to discovery. We are accomplishing these objectives in
three ways. First, we are incorporating to the educational program
activities that replicate procedures used in on-site research. Second,
we are producing temporary exhibits featuring current research.
Third, we are developing long-term exhibits based on monitoring
physical and biological variables. These exhibits define a basic
unresolved problem or unanswered question and then gradually—as
new measurements are made daily and displayed in the exhibits—reveal
the long-term patterns needed to answer it.
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