Isla Gibraleón is a small, uninhabited

Panama Panama, officially the Republic of Panama, is a country in Latin America at the southern end of Central America, bordering South America. It is bordered by Costa Rica to the west, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north, and ...

nian island that is part of the Pearl Islands

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands. An archipelago may be in an ocean, a sea, or a smaller body of water. Example archipelagos include the Aegean Islands (the o ...

() in the Gulf of Panama. 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 the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the cont ...

coast of Panama. The island has an coastline, five beaches, a

mangrove swamp Mangrove forests, also called mangrove swamps, mangrove thickets or mangals, are productive wetlands that occur in coastal intertidal zones. Mangrove forests grow mainly at tropical and subtropical latitudes because mangrove trees cannot withs ...

, 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 mean, average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal Body of water, bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical ...

, and is in the

Eastern Time Zone The Eastern Time Zone (ET) is a time zone encompassing part or all of 23 U.S. states, states in the eastern part of the United States, parts of eastern Canada, and the state of Quintana Roo in Mexico. * Eastern Standard Time (EST) is five ...

( UTC−05:00).

Climate

The

Intertropical Convergence Zone The Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ , or ICZ), known by sailors as the doldrums or the calms because of its monotonous windless weather, is the area where the northeast and the southeast trade winds converge. It encircles Earth near the t ...

(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 The equator is the circle of latitude that divides Earth into the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Southern Hemisphere, Southern Hemispheres of Earth, hemispheres. It is an imaginary line located at 0 degrees latitude, about in circumferen ...

, 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 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 Hemisphere, ...

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, El or el may refer to: Arts and entertainment Fictional entities * El, a character from the manga series ''Shugo Chara!'' by Peach-Pit * Eleven (''Stranger Things'') (El), a fictional character in the TV series ''Stranger Things'' * El, fami ...

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 animal, aquatic placental mammal, placental marine mammals. As an informal and Colloquialism, colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea ...

and

tiger shark The tiger shark (''Galeocerdo cuvier'') is a species of ground shark, and the only extant member of the genus '' Galeocerdo'' and family Galeocerdonidae. It is a large apex predator, with females capable of attaining a length of over . Popula ...

sperm whale The sperm whale or cachalot (''Physeter macrocephalus'') is the largest of the toothed whales and the largest toothed predator. It is the only living member of the Genus (biology), genus ''Physeter'' and one of three extant species in the s ...

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, loggerh ...

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 Edward Michael "Bear" Grylls (; born 7 June 1974) is a British adventurer, writer, television presenter and former Special Air Service, SAS trooper who is also a survival expert. He first drew attention after embarking on a number of notable ...

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—and Isla Gibraleón home to 14 British women. In 2021 the swedish version of the television series

The Island Sverige ''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The ...

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