Liveaboards Scuba Diving Cocos Island Costa Rica

Among Cocos Island’s many attributes is a startling degree of biodiversity. This Island’s world-renowned waters explode with life; including innumerable white tip reef sharks, schooling hammerhead sharks, dolphins, mantas and marbled rays, giant moray eels, sailfish, and of course the occasional whale shark. Other common encounters are large schools of jacks and tuna, silky sharks, silver tip sharks, marlin, Creole fish, green turtles and octopus.

Cocos Island is also home to at least twenty seven endemic fish species including the exotic red-lipped batfish. The terrestrial life at Cocos also exhibits a high number of endemic plants. Here there exist around seventy out of the two hundred thirty five identified vascular plant species in the world, some twenty five species of moss, twenty seven species of liverwort and eighty five species of fungus. There are upwards of eighty seven bird species, including the famous Cocos Island cuckoo, finch and flycatcher. There are three hundred sixty two species of insects, of which sixty four are endemic, and two native reptiles.

Beneath the waterfalls and in the rivers are freshwater fish that mystify scientists by their very existence. Because of its remote location and abundance of fresh water, Cocos has long been a favorite stop-over and re-supply station for pirates, whalers and sailors. Early visitors left pigs on the island as a self-perpetuating source of fresh meat. To this day feral pigs and deer abound, much to the detriment of the island’s indigenous ground-nesting birds. These animals, introduced by man, are also responsible for hastening soil erosion by their digging, undermining and degrading the native vegetation.