{"id":4808,"date":"2025-12-11T05:36:22","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T05:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepanamaproject.org\/?page_id=4808"},"modified":"2026-07-03T05:42:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T05:42:00","slug":"diving-deep-for-conservation","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/divaind.com\/yas1\/our-story\/diving-deep-for-conservation\/","title":{"rendered":"Diving Deep for Conservation"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Diving Deep for Conservation<\/span><\/h1><\/div><\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Panama Project\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>

Diving Deep for Conservation<\/h2>\t\t\t\t
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Between his supply runs, Bender \u2014 a PADI Master Diver \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

With the same determination that fueled his humanitarian missions, he founded a local-global partnership: the\u00a0Rotary Reef Program<\/strong>. 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 \u2014 training fishermen to harvest the invasive species for local restaurants, generating income while protecting native marine life.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Original Artwork<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bocas del Toro Artist Julie Jorgensen<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The\nPanama Project<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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On his supply rounds, Bender noticed a striking contradiction: imported pineapples arriving from Panama\u2019s mainland \u2014 even as perfectly good local fruit rotted unpicked nearby. From that simple observation emerged Bocas Bounty<\/strong>, a community exchange program encouraging residents to share and trade what they grew \u2014 fruits, vegetables, seeds, seedlings, and even fish.<\/p>

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.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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