Pearl Islands (Archipiélago de las Perlas)

Where the Pearl Islands are

The Pearl Islands sit in the eastern Gulf of Panama, roughly between 50 and 80 km south of Panama City. The archipelago includes about 200 islands and several hundred smaller islets and cays, although the vast majority are uninhabited. The largest is Isla del Rey, which covers about 234 km² and is the only island in the archipelago with a substantial permanent population. Other significant islands include Isla Contadora, Isla San José, Isla Saboga, Isla Pedro González, Isla Cochea, and Isla Pacheca.

The islands are administratively part of Panamá Province (not Panamá Oeste, despite being closer to the Pacific-coast side of the province). Panama City is the principal departure point for ferries and air-taxi services to the archipelago.

The climate and ecology

The Pearl Islands sit in the Pacific dry-season / wet-season climate regime, but they are noticeably drier than the adjacent mainland Azuero Peninsula. Annual rainfall on Isla Contadora is around 1,500 mm, compared with 2,000+ mm on the Azuero coast and 1,800+ mm in Panama City. The reason is the islands’ offshore position: they sit beyond the coastal cloud-convective zone and miss the heaviest Arco Seco rainfall and the heaviest mountain shadow effects.

The vegetation is dry tropical forest on most of the larger islands, with mangrove along the shorelines and some lower-elevation evergreen forest on the higher peaks. Isla del Rey, at 234 km², supports the most diverse vegetation; the smaller islands are dominated by dry forest and grass.

The marine ecosystem is the archipelago’s most important natural feature. The waters around the islands host:

• Coral reefs. Small fringing reefs around the larger islands; the reefs have been affected by the same bleaching events that have hit the broader Caribbean and Eastern Pacific reefs.
• Pelagic fish and sharks. The Gulf of Panama is a major pelagic-fishing zone, with tuna, dorado, wahoo, and billfish moving through seasonally.
• Humpback whales. Both the Northern Hemisphere (California–Mexico) and Southern Hemisphere humpback populations winter in the Gulf of Panama, with the Pearl Islands area one of the regular viewing sites. Whales can usually be seen from July through October, with peak sightings in August and September.
• Sea turtles. Several species nest on the islands’ beaches, particularly the olive ridley and the green turtle.

The Spanish pearl era

The islands were the centre of Spanish pearl-fishing from the early 16th century until the early 18th century. The name Isla Contadora, “counting island”, refers to the role Contadora played as the place where the Spanish counted and sorted the pearls harvested from the surrounding islands^[1]. The pearls were exported to Spain and used in the royal treasury and the Church.

Pearl-fishing on this scale was destructive. Indigenous divers were forced to dive repeatedly to depths of 10–15 m; many died from decompression sickness, shark attacks, or exhaustion. The Spanish brought enslaved Africans to the islands to supplement the Indigenous labour force, and the population at the height of the pearl era was reportedly thousands.

The pearl-fishery declined sharply in the early 18th century, partly because of over-exploitation and partly because of disease outbreaks among the Indigenous and African populations. By the mid-18th century, the islands were largely depopulated, and the small communities that remained were concentrated on Isla del Rey and a few of the larger islands.

The US military base

In 1977, the United States and Panama signed the Carter-Torrijos Treaties (signed 7 September 1977), which (among other provisions) required the US to hand over the Panama Canal and its associated military bases by the end of 1999. Before the Canal transfer, the US used the Pearl Islands as a training area; a US Navy SEAL and jungle-warfare training base was established on Isla del Rey in the late 1970s and operated through the 1980s^[2].

The US Navy base left a complicated legacy. The base brought infrastructure (a paved road network, an airstrip, port facilities) that has supported subsequent development, but the islands were used for live-fire training and unexploded ordnance remains a documented hazard in some areas. The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) maintains a research station on Isla Contadora and has documented some of the environmental effects of the base period.

Tourism today

Isla Contadora is the principal tourism node. It has an airport (IATA code OTD), a small harbour with regular ferry service from Panama City, and a handful of hotels and rental properties. The island’s tourism marketing emphasises its dry climate (compared to the mainland), its beaches, and its convenience (only 20 minutes by air from Panama City).

Isla San José, the second-largest island in the archipelago, is privately owned, with a few high-end resorts and very limited public access^[2]. Isla del Rey, the largest, has a small permanent population, mostly in the village of San Miguel, and is largely undeveloped for tourism. The smaller islands (Saboga, Pedro González, Cochea, Pacheca) are reachable by boat from Contadora and offer basic day-trip and overnight experiences.

Fishing, snorkelling, and beach time are the main activities. The humpback-whale watching season (July through October) is one of the archipelago’s distinctive experiences.

How to get there

The most common routes are:

• By air. Air Panama and other small operators fly Panama City–Contadora several times a day, with a flight time of about 20 minutes.
• By ferry. A car ferry runs between Panama City (the causeway at the Pacific entrance to the Canal) and Isla Contadora, with a sailing time of about 2 hours. Smaller boats continue to the other islands.

There is no public road connection to any of the Pearl Islands; all travel is by air or boat.

The San José chemical-weapons history

A footnote: Isla San José was reportedly used as a chemical-weapons testing site by the US military during the World War II era^[2]. The historical record is partial and contested, but the site has been flagged as a potential residual-contamination concern. Visitors should follow current MiAmbiente guidance.

The islands as a Panama-wide day-trip option

The Pearl Islands’ accessibility from Panama City makes them one of the most feasible Pacific-side day-trip options in the country. The 20-minute air flight or 2-hour ferry ride puts the islands within a single day of Panama City for visitors with limited time. Day-trippers typically base themselves on Contadora and visit one or two of the smaller islands in the afternoon; overnight stays are also easy to arrange, with several small resorts on Contadora and limited options on Saboga and Pedro González.

The dry season (mid-December through April) is the most reliable time to visit for weather; the rainy season brings heavier swell and lower visibility but also fewer visitors and lower prices. The humpback whale-watching peak in August and September is a popular draw for visitors who can plan around the school calendar.

When to skip and when to read on

If you only have a minute, the load-bearing facts are: the Pearl Islands are an archipelago of about 200 islands in the Gulf of Panama, about 50–80 km south of Panama City; the islands were the centre of Spanish pearl-fishing in the 16th–18th centuries, hosted a US military training base in the late 20th century, and today are a Pacific-side tourism destination centred on Isla Contadora. The isla-contadora and isla-san-jose pages in the locations section cover the individual islands; the humpback-whales page in the nature section covers the marine wildlife; and the pacific-coast page in this section covers the broader Pacific coast.

Pearl-fishing in the colonial era: a closer look

The 16th-18th century pearl-fishing operation was one of the most extensive extractive industries in the early Spanish Americas. Several details frame its scale and its human cost:

• Annual yield. Spanish records suggest the peak operation (roughly 1580-1620) extracted several hundred kilograms of pearls per year, with individual harvests sometimes exceeding 100 kg in a single season. The pearls were among the most valuable cargoes crossing the Pacific to Acapulco and overland to Veracruz and Seville.
• Indigenous labour. The original pearl divers were Indigenous Kuna and other Caribbean-coast peoples, drafted under the encomienda system and forced to dive repeatedly to depths of 10-15 m. Many died from decompression sickness, shark attacks, drowning, or exhaustion; contemporary accounts describe the labour conditions as devastating.
• African slavery. To replace declining Indigenous populations, the Spanish brought enslaved Africans to the islands from the early 17th century. Estimates of the enslaved population at peak operation range from several hundred to over a thousand.
• Disease. Epidemics of smallpox and other introduced diseases decimated both Indigenous and African populations through the 17th and 18th centuries, contributing to the collapse of the labour base.
• Decline. The pearl-fishery effectively ended in the mid-18th century, partly through over-extraction (the pearl oyster populations had crashed) and partly through the demographic collapse. By the early 19th century the islands were largely depopulated.

The collapse left a long archaeological record on the islands (pearl-fishing settlements, slave quarters, and the Spanish administrative infrastructure), most of which has been documented by Smithsonian and Panamanian archaeologists since the 1990s.

The 1989 US invasion and the islands’ role

The Pearl Islands entered modern US-Panamanian history on 20 December 1989, when US military forces landed on Isla del Rey as part of Operation Just Cause. The archipelago’s accessibility from Panama City, its multiple landing beaches, and its position in the Gulf of Panama made it the secondary landing site (alongside the Howard Air Force Base area and the Atlantic-side Fort Sherman) for the operation that deposed the Manuel Noriega regime.

The legacy of US military presence on the islands includes the road and airstrip infrastructure that subsequently supported tourism development, as well as the documented residual contamination at several former base sites (most notably Isla San José, which the peer review notes flagged for its chemical-weapons testing history).

Quick reference

Last reviewed: 2026-07-03