Diving Deep for Conservation
The Panama Project
Original Artwork
Bocas del Toro Artist Julie Jorgensen
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.
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.
