Cocos Island
Cocos Island is a volcanic island in the Pacific Ocean administered by Costa Rica, approximately 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, 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 entirety of Cocos Island has been designated a Costa Rican National Park since 1978, and has no permanent inhabitants other than Costa Rican park rangers. While previously being portrayed as the largest uninhabited island within the tropics, this has been labeled a false claim, as the island of Fernandina in the Galapagos archipelago is also uninhabited and far larger in area. 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 any of the other islands in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Because of the unique ecology of the island and its surrounding waters, Cocos Island National Park became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. The island can only be reached by sea, which usually takes 36 to 48 hours.
History
Prehistory
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 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.Discovery and early cartography
In his Historia general y natural de las Indias, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés discusses the discovery of the island by his contemporary, Spanish navigator Juan de Cabezas, in 1526. D. Lievre, Una isla desierta en el Pacífico; la isla del Coco in Los viajes de Cockburn y Lievre por Costa Rica 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 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, 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 contained an inset of Cocos Island. Two centuries later the rocks at Chatham Bay were filled with inscriptions, and the coconut trees were gone.
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."
Administrative history
Cocos Island was annexed by Costa Rica in 1832 by decree No. 54 of the Constitutional Assembly of the newly independent country. Whalers stopped regularly at Cocos Island until the mid-19th century, when inexpensive kerosene started to replace whale oil for lighting.In October 1863, the ship Adelante marooned 426 Tongan former slaves on the island when it was discovered that they had contracted smallpox and were a danger to her crew. By the time the vessel Tumbes arrived to rescue them one month later, only 38 survivors were found, the rest having perished from smallpox.
In 1897, the Costa Rican government named the German adventurer and treasure hunter August Gissler the first Governor of Cocos Island and allowed him to establish a short-lived colony there.
On May 12, 1970, the insular territory of Cocos Island was incorporated administratively by means of Executive Decree No. 27, making it the eleventh district of Puntarenas canton of the Puntarenas Province.
As a district, the island has the postal code of 60110.
The island's 33 residents, all of them Costa Rican park rangers, were allowed to vote for the first time in Costa Rica's February 5, 2006, election. However, the rangers are not considered permanent residents of the district, therefore the census data considers the island to be uninhabited.
Piracy and hidden treasures
Cocos Island has featured heavily in many tales of pirate lore and buried treasure. The first claims of treasure buried on the island came from a woman named Mary Welch, who claimed that 350 tons of gold raided from Spanish galleons had been buried on the island by Captain Bennett Graham, a naval officer who had become a pirate in 1818. She had been a member of a pirate crew led by Captain Graham, and was transported to an Australian penal colony for her crimes. She possessed a chart showing where Graham's treasure was supposed to be hidden. On her release, she returned to the island with an expedition but had no success in finding anything, as the points of reference in the chart had disappeared.Another pirate supposed to have buried treasure on the island was the Portuguese Benito Bonito, who began terrorizing the west coast of the Americas around 1818. Though Bonito was hunted down and executed, his treasure was never retrieved.
Perhaps the best-known of the treasure legends tied to the island is that of the fabled Treasure of Lima. In 1820, with the army of José de San Martín approaching Lima, Viceroy José de la Serna is supposed to have entrusted treasure from the city to British trader Captain William Thompson for safekeeping until the Spaniards could secure the country. Instead of waiting in the harbor as they were instructed, Thompson and his crew killed the viceroy's men and sailed to Cocos, where they allegedly buried the treasure. Shortly afterwards, they were apprehended by a Spanish warship. All of the crew except Thompson and his first mate were executed for piracy. The two said they would show the Spaniards where they had hidden the treasure in return for their lives, but after landing on Cocos, they escaped into the forest and were never recaptured.
Hundreds of attempts to find treasure on the island have failed. Several early expeditions were mounted on the basis of claims by a man named Keating, who was supposed to have befriended Thompson. On one trip, Keating was said to have retrieved gold and jewels from the treasure. German adventurer August Gissler lived on the island for most of the period from 1889 until 1908, hunting the treasure, but only found a few gold coins. British Antarctic explorer Aeneas Mackintosh launched a treasure-hunting expedition to Cocos in 1910, without success.
Present status and international distinctions
Cocos Island was declared a Costa Rican National Park by means of an executive decree in 1978 and designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1997. In 2002, the World Heritage Site designation was extended to include an expanded marine zone of. In addition, it is included in the list of Wetlands of International Importance. In 2009, Cocos Island was short-listed as a candidate for the New7Wonders of Nature by the New7Wonders of the World Foundation, ranking second in the island category.Thanks to the great diversity of marine life in its waters, Cocos Island was named one of the best 10 scuba diving spots in the world by the Professional Association of Diving Instructors and a "must do" according to diving experts. Popular dive spots around the island are Bajo Alcyone, Manuelina Garden and Dos Amigos Grande. For many, the main attractions are the large pelagic fish species, which are very abundant in this unique meeting point between deep and shallow waters. The largest schools of hammerhead sharks in the world are consistently reported there. Encounters with dozens if not hundreds of these and other large animals are nearly certain in every dive. Smaller and colorful species are also abundant in one of the most extensive coral reefs in the southeastern Pacific. Famous oceanographer Jacques Cousteau visited the island several times and in 1994 called it "the most beautiful island in the world". Such accolades have highlighted the urgent need to protect Cocos Island and its surrounding waters from illegal large-scale fishing, poaching and other [|threats].
The only persons allowed to live on Cocos Island are Costa Rican park rangers who reside in encampments at Wafer Bay and Chatham Bay. Access by civilians is very limited; tourists and ship crew members are allowed ashore only with permission of island rangers, and are not permitted to camp, stay overnight or collect any flora, fauna or minerals from the island. Occasional amateur radio DXpeditions are allowed to visit.
The island is also very popular in pirate lore. It is said that over 300 expeditions have searched for buried treasure there, such as the hoard of Benito Bonito, the Treasure of Lima, and many others. Some small caches have been discovered, leading many to believe that the stories of vast pirate treasures are true, though the majority of searches have been unsuccessful. Treasure hunting is strictly prohibited by the Costa Rican government and permits are not being issued.