Cocos Island National Park at 48 | Costa Rica's Underwater Wildnerness
On 22 June 1978, Costa Rica declared Cocos Island a national park. Forty-eight years later, on 22 June 2026, MÍRAME artist Edwar Herreno marked the anniversary from the island. The post on social media was a declation of affection from someone who has spent many years diving and photographing one of the most biodiverse stretches of ocean in the Pacific.
Cocos Island, Costa Rica
Cocos Island sits 550 kilometres off the Pacific coast, reachable only after 36 hours at sea. It is uninhabited except for park rangers, and access is strictly controlled. In 1997 it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, its outstanding marine biodiversity and ecological processes cited as the basis for designation.
The waters around it are among the most biodiverse in the Pacific — massive aggregations of scalloped hammerhead sharks, sometimes numbering in the hundreds, patrol the deep water, while whale sharks and giant manta rays visit seasonally. The convergence of the Panama Current and the Pacific Equatorial Countercurrent creates the nutrient-rich upwellings that make the marine ecosystem here so extraordinary — home to more than 300 species of fish and almost 50% of all endemic species in Costa Rica.
Edwar Herreno, Frog Fish, Cocos Island, Costa Rica
Cocos Island National Park is also one of the most threatened places in the region. Despite its protected status, in 2023 eighteen marine conservation organisations found that Costa Rica was violating international fishery conventions related to illegal fishing in the waters around the island, endangering billfish and sharks. Park rangers now use advanced radar systems to monitor vessels entering the protected area, and there are signs that increased monitoring is beginning to have an effect — but the pressure on the island's marine ecosystems remains real. Protection on paper and protection in practice are not always the same thing. Edwar Herreno's photographs are, among other things, a record of what is still there — and an argument for keeping it that way.
Edwar Herreno has been photographing Cocos Island for years. He works underwater — in the deep water where the hammerheads congregate, in the shallower reefs where smaller species move through coral and rock. His images make the place legible to people who will never make the 36-hour journey.
Edwar Herreno, School of Hammerhead Sharks. Cocos Island, Costa Rica
School of Hammerhead Sharks required Herreno to position himself on the seabed and hold his breath — for several minutes, fighting the current — so that the sharks would pass overhead without being disturbed. Hammerheads are easily startled; the moment he exhaled, they vanished. He held the bottom with one hand and the camera with the other. The resulting image shows them from directly below, a formation so dense it reads almost as an abstract pattern — until you remember what you are looking at.
This hammerhead shark photograph, taken by Herreno in 2008, is remarkable because you no longer see this number of hammerheads sharks due to declining populations. Herreno considers himself hugely fortunate to capture such a rare sight; diving beneath the sharks and looking up at them is a dream come true for all divers.
Edwar Herreno, Whale shark under MV Shark Water. Cocos Island, Costa Rica
Whale Shark Under MV Shark Water was taken while accompanying an NGO on a shark conservation mission off Cocos Island, aboard a converted whale hunting vessel. A whale shark was circling the boat. Herreno spent forty minutes in the water alongside it, manoeuvring with the heavy camera while the boat moved and the animal moved, to get the split-shot — half above the surface, half below — that became the image. It was awarded second place in the United Nations World Oceans Day photography competition and now hangs in the UN headquarters in New York.
Herreno trained as a marine biologist in 2002 and has spent the decades since accumulating am extraordinary body of experience: technical diving instructor, yacht captain, videographer, and a collaborator with conservation organisations across the world. His underwater film work has contributed to productions for CNN, BBC and National Geographic. He has been a finalist in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition at the Natural History Museum in London, was named Underwater Photographer of the Year by the United Nations in 2019, and received the same recognition in England in 2017.
Cocos Island is, by his own account, his favourite place on earth. Of course he would be there on 22 June to celebrate the anniversary of the Cocos Island National Park. His images are the work of someone who has given years of his life to understanding what lives beneath the surface of one of the most extraordinary stretches of ocean on the planet.
His photographs from Cocos Island National Park and elsewhere in Costa Rica are available through MÍRAME now. If you would like to discuss a work or find out more, we would be glad to hear from you — [email protected]
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