Here’s a few visual tidbits, of middling quality and interest, to tie you over in case you’re not diving any time soon and you’ve already scrolled through all the search results for scuba on google images.

Every single dive around Coiba Island had reef sharks.

Morays are frequent around Coiba, green, spotted, golden, jeweled even a zebra eel.

Eagle rays? Sediment? Yes please.

Do you like barracudas and iffy filming? This is for you.

Baby puffers are among the coolest things you can spot under water. It’s smaller than your thumbnail, so yes, my video sucks., i was doing my best not to bump into the coral (I didn’t). It’s the black ball with white spots. This is around Bocas Del Toro.

Coiba really is the realm of the white tips.

That creature in the middle is called a bearded fireworm, you don’t want to brush your skin against it.

Seahorses, caballito in Spanish, are just chill creatures. Check out this yellow one just hanging out.

The queen angelfish, zero color manipulation in that pic.

The silver looking balls in the next pic are called sea pearls, they’re a type of algae, and are one of the world’s largest unicellular creatures.

The slippery dick. It’s this fish’s actual name. Google it (at work) if you don’t believe me, go ahead I dare you. It took me a while to figure out what was going on the first time my dive buddy invented an underwater sign for this fish.

Here you have an anemone, some featherdusters, colorful coral and the ever territorial, and small, damsel fish.

Spotted moray eel. Eels in general look fearsome, especially because they frequently open and close their mouths displaying their teeth. This is not a threatening gesture however, but a mechanism for passing more water through their gills and thus breathing.

Camouflaged scorpion fish, in the spotlight, something else you don’t want to touch underwater. BTW, as a rule, when diving remember MC Hammer’s wise word, you can’t touch this. Just don’t touch anything. You’ll stay safe and you won’t damage anything.

We got to see quite a few toadfishes around Bocas Del Toro as well. You’ll pretty much always find them hiding in crevices or under rocks.

What’s cool about the next video, is that you see (sort of) the toadfish’s tail, a part usually hidden.

That blur in the next pic is not for artistic effect. It’s the thermocline, the contact layer where the hotter surface water meets a colder one, and the change in density distorts the light. Also the temperature drop was drastic. The water around Coiba could get quite cold, think 7mm long.

Running into a school of squids around Bocas…

…and into a lonely nurse shark.

It was a fascinating dive trip. The selection above is really just a small sample of all there was to see. Also the ability to dive the Pacific and the Caribbean on the same trips allowed us to highlight how different both ecosystems and their creatures can be.

We had a great time, and there were dolphins, pods of them.

What did we think about diving in Panama? Easy:

Here’s to seeing you under the waves real soon.