How the Panama Canal Expansion is Threatening Panama’s Ecosystem and Water Supply

1:00:00 Panama is having a crucial problem right now that could affect their puddle of water for half of Panama's population due to the expansion of the Panama Canal in 2016 that led to invasive saltwater species getting into a freshwater resource that's not only displacing fishermen but also affecting the quality of water that is coming into Panama. We're going to talk about it on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host Andrew Lewin. This is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. On today's episode, we're going to be talking about the Panama Canal, not because the US wants to take it over and maybe after they find this out, they may not want to take it over, which they're not going to, let's be honest.

1:00:49 But we're talking about the Panama Canal because of a 2016 expansion that had a design to accommodate larger vessels that inadvertently facilitated the migration of saltwater fish from both the Atlantic and the Pacific into a lake called Lake Gatun. I think I'm pronouncing that properly. It's a canals primary freshwater reservoir and this ecological fish is displacing native freshwater species and adversely affecting local communities. And also on top of that, it could threaten the potable water situation, which is the drinkable water situation and usable water situation for the half of Panama's population. This could be big. This could be very scary in the future if it's not addressed. And so let's talk about what happened before we do, though, if you are new to this podcast that we produce and publish Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays, you want to find out more about how you can protect the ocean and find out more about the ocean and increase your what we call ocean literacy, increase your knowledge about the ocean.

1:01:45 So please feel free to go speak up for blue.com. Check out all of our episodes. We have over 1700 episodes and there's other podcasts on there as well that you might be interested in. So check it out speak up for blue.com. Let's get back into the show. This is something that I feel like is really important because it's something that you don't always see ahead of time. If you don't do a good job addressing the potential issues that could happen in the future. So when the Panama Canal expansion happened normally, and I assume it went through because I didn't get the information on it, but normally you would do an environmental assessment like you would do for any kind of development. You would find out what the strengths are, what the potential consequences are. This is one of the consequences that could have come out from one of those if they were done thoroughly. Again, I don't know if it was done thoroughly or not. I couldn't get a hold of one and I couldn't find out if one was done. I assume it was done.

1:02:34 However, what eventually happened was we started to see saltwater incursion into their freshwater Lake Gattun, which has a lot of other different fish. It has peacock bass and tilapia, which local communities actually fish and eat. Those species are being displaced by snooks, jacks and snappers who if you know those species, they are saltwater species. That means there's marine water, saltwater that's getting into fresh water that's obviously going to change the dynamics of that ecosystem and that habitat. Getting rid of freshwater species because they can't handle the salt and bring in more saltwater species. Not only is that a problem, but they're coming in from the Atlantic and they're coming in from the Pacific.

1:03:14 So you're getting not only a mix of saltwater, but you're getting a mix of species that could potentially cross into each other's oceans through the Panama Canal. So Atlantic species could get into the Pacific. Pacific species could get into the Atlantic. That could be a very big problem when it comes to invasive species. If you don't know what invasive species is, a species that gets into a system that doesn't normally live there and that could do very well in that system. And there are a lot of examples probably the most important or one of the most recently popular species that has done this is the lionfish. Lionfish normally is from the Indo-Pacific and it will eat a lot of smaller fish around there. And it's not dominant within those systems, but it does well within those systems. It's a predator within those systems. The lionfish is a very popular marine hobby fish that you find in tanks all around North America and all around the world.

1:04:05 In North America, it is said that two or more lionfish were actually released into the ocean from those tanks, like the people who were done with it and they just released into the ocean. Not thinking that, hey, you know what? Those species don't belong there and they're probably going to die anyway or get eaten. But actually they reproduced and they lived and somehow they went all the way from like the lower half of the southeast of the US all the way down into the Caribbean where they proliferated very well. They did very well in those areas. And now they are dominating reefs in many places. If you go diving the Dominican, you go diving in Jamaica pretty much anywhere within the Caribbean, you can pretty much find a lionfish. They're pretty much everywhere. And there are a lot of people who go and hunt them and try and get and try and reduce their population, but they do so well. They end up eating a lot of other smaller reef fish, which affects the ecosystem of the Caribbean reefs, to be honest.

1:04:55 And so they're a big problem in the Atlantic and in the Caribbean. Now you talk about if Atlantic species like lionfish gets into the Pacific on that side. And normally they're in the Indo Pacific, so near Indonesia and so forth. If they get into the Pacific, like the Eastern Pacific, which is like the side of North and South America where the Panama Canal comes out, they can go all the way up the coast or all the way down the coast and they can invade those systems as well. And this is why invasive species are so dangerous, right? So there's the threat of invasive species crossing the Atlantic and going into the Pacific or just species that are crossing the Atlantic going into Lake Khatun and then coming out of the Pacific and vice versa. Those become invasive species and they could proliferate very well in those areas. And then all of a sudden, now you have a lot of different invasive species.

1:05:40 You lose biodiversity within each different oceans or those sections of the oceans. And you don't get a productive system. You don't get a healthy ecosystem. You can get a very affected ecosystem that can be impacted. And we don't want that. Let's go back into the fishing aspect for the local community. The article that I'm going to put in the show notes, talk to a couple of fishermen, including Felix Martinez Gonzalez, who reported dwindling catches. He said recently hauling in only 16 pounds of fish over six hours, which was a stark decline from the pre-expansion yields. So in sports fishing guides like Elswaldo, Alberto Robles also noted intensified competition with numerous boats vying for scarce fish exacerbating resource depletion.

1:06:22 So that means there are more people going out to fish the same fish and they're not as many fish. So there's more competition between boats or between fishermen. And that's becoming a problem as well. That can lead to a lot of conflicts. So obviously seeing this type of impact from the local fishing community as well as potential of invasive species and then just the dwindling of local species is very concerning when we talk about like such an important human creation in terms of the Panama Canal to connect the Atlantic and Pacific shipping lanes. This is a big part because we need the Panama Canal and we're affecting local communities where we could be introducing invasive species, which Panama Canal has always had to be careful of anyway because you're allowing ships to go from the Atlantic to the Pacific right away.

1:07:04 But also you are affecting the potable water, which is like the drinkable and usable water for half the population of Panama. That is not a good thing. That's something that could be very, very dangerous in the future. It could affect a lot of people, obviously. There's a lot of people in Panama and also be dangerous. Just absolutely be dangerous to a lot of people. So they're going to have to figure out some type of response, some type of mitigation measures. And there have been looking at it. So Panamanian authorities are exploring different types of solutions. The environment minister Juan Carlos Navarro emphasizes a measured yet urgent approach encapsulated in the Spanish proverb, I get dressed slowly because I'm in a hurry. I don't know exactly what that means, but I assume that the intervention has to be done properly.

1:07:48 So we have to take our time, but it has to be done as quickly as possible. That's how I interpret that. But I'd love to hear your thoughts too. You can just leave them in the comments below. But the potential interventions include installing barriers such as electric fields or even an air bubble curtain to prevent fish from getting in or to deter the movement of saltwater species into freshwater zones. However, these methods may impede shipping traffic and their effectiveness remains uncertain. So obviously more studies have to be done there. But again, we have to move quickly. Dr. Bela Galil, an expert on similar issues in the Suez Canal underscores a long term commitment required to manage invasive species warning that inaction could lead to destroyed areas. Obviously the situation underscores the complex problem and interplay between the infrastructural development and environmental stewardship.

1:08:34 Highlighting the necessity for comprehensive planning before you do expansion and to mitigate an unintended ecological consequences. I don't know what happened before. That's the mystery in here. But regardless of what happened, it wasn't effective enough to predict or deter this type of consequence and invasive species potentially the lack of fish for local fishermen, but also the danger of impeding or affecting potable water for half of a country. This is a big consequence for this Panama Canal and it really underscores why we need to do proper planning before we do an expansion like this. It should have been avoided. But I would love to hear your thoughts. You can leave them in the comments below or you can hit me up on Instagram.

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