Diving Deep for Conservation

The Panama Project

Diving Deep for Conservation

Between his supply runs, Bender — a PADI Master Diver — returned to his first love: the sea. What he found beneath the surface alarmed him: coral bleaching, shrinking fish populations, and the rapid spread of invasive lionfish threatening the ecosystem.

With the same determination that fueled his humanitarian missions, he founded a local-global partnership: the Rotary Reef Program. Working alongside local organizations, divers, scientists, and fishermen, the team built artificial reef structures, established a coral seed bank, and launched a comprehensive lionfish initiative — training fishermen to harvest the invasive species for local restaurants, generating income while protecting native marine life.

Original Artwork

Bocas del Toro Artist Julie Jorgensen

The Panama Project

On his supply rounds, Bender noticed a striking contradiction: imported pineapples arriving from Panama’s mainland — even as perfectly good local fruit rotted unpicked nearby. From that simple observation emerged Bocas Bounty, a community exchange program encouraging residents to share and trade what they grew — fruits, vegetables, seeds, seedlings, and even fish.

What began as a food-security effort during the pandemic soon blossomed into a movement for local resilience, uniting Indigenous, Afro-Caribbean, and expatriate communities across the islands.