Quick Facts
Weather:
Hot, humid and rainy.
The drier season is from mid-February through April and sometimes again in September and October.
Size:
2,635 acres with approximately one-tenth of the area marine (1,067 hectares, 4.1 square miles, 3 times the size of central park NYC)
Elevations:
Sea level
Established:
Cahuita National Park was established in 1970 to protect a large coral reef off the Caribbean coast. Unfortunately the reef is struggling for survival. An earthquake in 1992 lifted a large portion of the coral by about three meters (10 feet), some of it was exposed to the air and sun at low tide and rapidly perished. If it rains while you are there you will find that the submarine visibility is limited to a few feet for a few days due to the silt brought down in the Estrella river. This is an increasing threat caused by legal, and illegal logging of the forests inland from the park. The denuded slopes erode quickly and the silt blocks the sunlight the reefs need for survival. When it’s not raining the fate of the reefs is equally grim. The sunlight in combination with the excess fertilizer from the Dole banana plantations (what most of the forest lands are planted with after clear-cutting) causes plankton blooms that not only block the sunlight but poison the water… Something to think about when you sit down at your teak dining table to have a banana.
Habitats:
Tropical lowland wet forest (rain forest), beach, and coral reefs
Inhabitants:
Marine Invertebrates brain, elkhorn, gorgonian, and blue staghorn corals, sea fans, lobsters, urchins, clams, ghost shrimp, and sea cucumbers. On the shore look for red land crabs, and blue fiddlers. Fish over 500 species of fish including French angelfish, rock beauty and blue parrotfish Birds green ibis, yellow-crowned night herons, Northern boat-billed herons, Swainson toucans, keel-billed toucans, rufous kingfishers, and the Central American curassow.
Animals:
Tamandua, paca, coati, raccoons, howler and capuchin monkeys, sloths, armadillos caimans, and iguanas.
