Isla Gibraleón is a small, uninhabited

Panama Panama ( , ; es, link=no, Panamá ), officially the Republic of Panama ( es, República de Panamá), is a transcontinental country spanning the southern part of North America and the northern part of South America. It is bordered by Co ...

nian island that is part of the

Pearl Islands The Pearl Islands (Spanish: Archipiélago de las Perlas or Islas de las Perlas) is a group of 200 or more islands and islets (many tiny and uninhabited) lying about off the Pacific coast of Panama in the Gulf of Panama. Islands The most nota ...

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered islands. Examples of archipelagos include: the Indonesian Arc ...

( es, Archipielago de las Perlas) in the

Gulf of Panama The Gulf of Panama ( es, Golfo de Panamá) is a gulf of the Pacific Ocean off the southern coast of Panama, where most of eastern Panama's southern shores adjoin it. The Gulf has a maximum width of , a maximum depth of and the size of . The Pana ...

. It is located west of Isla Casaya, and is part of a group of 200 or more islands and islets (many tiny and uninhabited) lying about off the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

coast of Panama. The island has an coastline, five beaches, a mangrove swamp, and is covered in of dense jungle. It has a total surface area of , which makes it the 12th largest island in the archipelago. Isla Gibraleón rises to a height of above

sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardise ...

, and is in the

Eastern Time Zone The Eastern Time Zone (ET) is a time zone encompassing part or all of 23 states in the eastern part of the United States, parts of eastern Canada, the state of Quintana Roo in Mexico, Panama, Colombia, mainland Ecuador, Peru, and a small p ...

( UTC−05:00).

Climate

The Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), known by sailors as the doldrums, governs the climate of Isla Gibraleón. March is the warmest month, with an average temperature of ; January is the coldest, averaging at night. Due to its proximity to the equator, Isla Gibraleón does not have distinct seasons. Variations in the location of the ITCZ drastically affect rainfall in many equatorial regions, resulting in the wet-and-dry seasons of the tropics rather than the cold-and-warm seasons of higher latitudes. Isla Gibraleón's wet season occurs from May to December, when the ITCZ is over (or slightly north of) Panama. This period is characterised by light, variable winds and heavy rainfall. The dry season, characterised by clear skies and predominantly northeastern Caribbean

trade wind The trade winds or easterlies are the permanent east-to-west prevailing winds that flow in the Earth's equatorial region. The trade winds blow mainly from the northeast in the Northern Hemisphere and from the southeast in the Southern Hemisph ...

s, is from January to April (when the ITCZ is south of Panama). The island's location in the Pearl Islands archipelago protects it from the effects of

El Niño El Niño (; ; ) is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific (approximately between the International Date ...

and allows the surrounding waters—usually between during the wet season—to sustain the uninterrupted evolution of new marine species, including

whale Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins and ...

and

tiger shark The tiger shark (''Galeocerdo cuvier'') is a species of requiem shark and the last extant member of the family Galeocerdonidae. It is a large macropredator, capable of attaining a length over . Populations are found in many tropical and tempera ...

s, sperm whales,

sea turtle Sea turtles (superfamily Chelonioidea), sometimes called marine turtles, are reptiles of the order Testudines and of the suborder Cryptodira. The seven existing species of sea turtles are the flatback, green, hawksbill, leatherback, loggerhe ...

s, angel rays and large schools of fish.

In popular culture

Isla Gibraleon was used for the Morgan Tribe on the television show Survivor: Pearl Islands in 2003. Isla Gibraleón was the men's island in the first series of '' The Island with Bear Grylls'', and the women's island in the second series. In the first series (which began on 5 May 2014), thirteen British men were taken to the island by Bear Grylls for a month; they were left alone, with the clothes they wore and some basic tools, to film themselves. For the second series (in April 2015) the format was repeated, with a team of 14 British men living on another island in the archipelago—

Isla San Telmo Isla San Telmo is located in the southeast area of the Pearl Islands in Panama. It is the first landsighting when sailing to the port of Panama. The Reserva Natural Isla San Telmo was established in 1996 as a protection measure for the island; mar ...

—and Isla Gibraleón home to 14 British women. In 2021 the swedish version of the television series The Island Sverige was filmed on the island. 8 famous swedish men and women was stranded there for 14 days.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Isla Gibraleon Pacific islands of Panama Gulf of Panama Uninhabited islands of Panama Uninhabited islands of the Pacific Ocean Panamá Province

Climate

In popular culture

See also

References