Pedasi Fishing
While Pedasi boasts a small marina for launching small and mid-size boats, Mr. Grimes says a world-class marina would boost the area’s profile to no end. “We need a marina,” he says emphatically. “I can’t tell you the number of people with money, that have boats, that want to come here. To support the type of activity that I can see happening here, you need a first-class marina.”
Everyone agrees that a large-scale marina will do much to boost Pedasi’s reputation in the sport-fishing world, but even without it, the word is spreading fast.
Pedasi now hosts an annual fishing tournament held by Pedasi Fishing, another local sport-fishing outfit, which this year drew dozens of boats and hundreds of spectators over the weekend-long competition. In fact, it is the abundant fishing, in addition to the area’s dry climate, clear waters and country charms that have drawn increased tourism and development to the area in recent years.
Many developers are targeting fishing enthusiasts, building gated communities tailored to their needs, with beach clubs and waterfront storage lockers to easily store fishing gear.
“Pedasi is far from everything, and really authentic. You can fish, surf, bike, ride horses, all in a very special place,” says Daniel Rudas of Dekel Panama S.A., the development group building Andromeda Pedasi, the town’s first vacation community, slated to begin construction in early 2009.
He and his partners hope to attract serious sport-fishers among their clients, envisioning a multitude of fishing yachts anchored offshore in Pedasi’s future.
Tourists and developers aren’t the only ones drawn to the bounty of these Pacific waters. Marine scientists from around the world visit the Achotines Laboratory, in face of the Frailes Islands. The laboratory has been operating in the Pedasi district since 1985, studying the life cycle of yellow-fin tuna. Because their numbers are so plentiful in the waters offshore, scientists can easily collect dozens of juvenile tuna to raise and breed in large, specially-made tanks.
Their studies are helping to provide clues as to the feeding, breeding and migration habits of these tuna in the wild — about which little is known to date — in hopes of instituting conservation programs to prevent the population loss seen in the blue fin tuna, whose flesh is so prized for sushi and other Asian dishes.
“The commission (the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, which oversees the Achotines Laboratory) also works to reduce tuna by-catch,” says lab technician Daniel Perez, “through experimental nets with escape hatches to see if juvenile fish are able to escape while restraining mature tuna.”
Future studies will also include sailfish, he says, which is good news for sport-fishers; their work will help ensure game fish off Pedasi remain plentiful for generations to come.
